Govt’s ‘insincerity’ cost Doon Smart City tag

Jyotirmay Thapliyal

Tribune News Service

Dehradun, May 29

Doon’s dream of getting the smart city status again has dashed to ground as the city has not been included on the second list of 13 smart cities released by the Union government. Even in the first phase of the selection in January 2016, Dehradun was nowhere in the picture.

Doonites, who now hope that the Dehradun may ultimately find a place in the third phase of selections, do contest the state government’s half-hearted efforts.

Brig KG Behl (retd), a citizen, explains that the Union government has laid down certain norms to decide which areas need to be included in the proposed smart city. These include areas which have been neglected and could not be developed for so many years for different reasons.

“All those areas which constitute the main town and have not been developed due to some reasons need to be included. Slum colonies which have come up during the period along the streams passing through the town, which are not only polluting the town but also do not have essential facilities to live, need to be included in the plan for smart city so that they may be evacuated to specified areas where alternate modern accommodation could be provided simultaneously,” Brig Behl pointed out.

Aam Aadmi Party state working committee president Anoop Nautiyal alleged that the state government had resorted to rampant corruption in the name of smart city and had even signed memorandums of understanding with fake companies.

He said the state government from day one had never been sincere in its efforts for smart city. He said even online rigging had taken place in the Dehradun Smart City online poll to generate false support for the state government’s view about the project.

The AAP leader said Dehradun had been divided in four zones and six options had been given to online citizen to cast vote.

These six options are, Retrofitting of Zone 1, Retrofitting of Zone 2, Retrofitting of Zone 3, Retrofitting of Zone 4, Greenfield on approximate 350 acres of “Vacant Land” at Tea Estate plus Retrofitting of Zone 4 and Redevelopment of area of citizens priority.

“It is unbelievable to see that 81 per cent of people have voted only for the tea estate option, which is also the state government’s choice whereas the balance five options have garnered 19 per cent votes,” Anoop Nautiyal said, asserting that pushing forward wrong proposal was the main reason behind Dehradun getting excluded from the list of smart city in selection both times.

Brig Behl also points out that it is important that central portion of Dehradun starting from Clock Tower as centre with roughly 4 to 5 km around be included to cover the smart city of Dehradun and plans be prepared accordingly. It can be a multi-crore project, which can be limited to Rs 500 crore in the first phase and rest in the next phase, so that the whole of Dehradun became a smart city.

“You need to prepare the smart city proposal on correct lines and there is no doubt that it will get the approval from the urban development authorities”, Brig Behl observed.