Smart City project: Company floated to speed up work in Dharamsala

Lalit Mohan

Tribune News Service

Dharamsala, February 26

Dharamsala was selected as a Smart City under the Government of India scheme in May last year. It has been about eight months since then, but little progress has been made under the project.

The Government of India last week held an online meeting with officials of all cities selected under the Smart City scheme. Sources here said that the Central officials were not happy with the progress made under the project.

Lalit Jain, Commissioner, Municipal Corporation, who is also the managing director of the Smart City project of Dharamsala, when contacted, said the progress made under the project in Dharamsala was better than other cities. The Central government officials have noted this fact.

He said the first step under the project was to register Dharamsala Smart City Private Ltd as a company. The company has floated 500 shares that have been distributed equally among the Municipal Commissioner, Dharamsala, Deputy Commissioner, Kangra, Mayor and the Government of India nominee.

An international tender has been floated for the recruitment of Project Management Consultants in IT, architecture and other specialties. Tenders are likely to be opened soon. The consultants would be conceiving the projects under the Smart City project and handing them over to the municipal corporation for implementation, Lalit Jain said.

The work to develop the website of the Smart City Dharamsala has been given to NIXI, a Government of India enterprise.

The work for conversion of all street lights in Dharamsala Municipal Corporation area to LED light had been initiated. Under it, 6500 LED lights would be installed in the corporation area. The project would ultimately be synchronized with the Smart City project, The contract to install LED street lights in Dharamsala has been handed over to Energy Efficiency Services Ltd. forty work under this project has been completed, the MD of smart city project said.

The sources here said that work to install underground dustbins in Dharamsala would also be synchronized under the Smart City project. Under it 300 underground dustbins would be installed in the city municipal corporation area. Out of these, 70 dustbins have already arrived in Dharamsala.

A survey was also being conducted under the Smart City project to calculate and impose property tax under the corporation, sources said. All properties in Dharamsala would be linked to Google maps.

Meanwhile, the sources here said that the state government had not contributed its share to the Smart City project.

To date the state government has contributed just about Rs 12 lakh for the project. The corporation has requested the state government to contribute Rs 20 crores to Dharamsala Smart City Pvt. Ltd Company that is 10 per cent of what has been contributed by the Government of India.

Union government guidelines, however, state that the state government should contribute 50 per cent of the total cost of the project that comes to about Rs 200 crores in the first year.

The state government has, however, written to the union government to treat Himachal as a special category state and allow it to contribute just 10 per cent of the project.