Smart city: Mayor, his deputy knock at Virbhadra’s door

SHIMLA: Shimla Mayor Sanjay Chauhan and Deputy Mayor Tikender Panwar today urged Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh to take up the case of Shimla with Union Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu for its inclusion under the National Smart City Mission.

Kuldeep Chauhan

Tribune News Service

Shimla, August 4

Shimla Mayor Sanjay Chauhan and Deputy Mayor Tikender Panwar today urged Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh to take up the case of Shimla with Union Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu for its inclusion under the National Smart City Mission.

Although the Chief Minister assured them of looking into the matter, Chauhan and Panwar insisted that Shimla met all required parameters listed by the ministry for Stage-I clearance.

Sanjay Chauhan said Shimla was the only city in the state which had implemented the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission and was ahead of Dharamsala.

No other ULB can match the scale and services of Shimla catering to a population of around 3 lakh people, including tourists, they said. There is no match of Dharamsala and Shimla if these are compared fairly and transparently. The fake data presented by Dharamsala was accepted without any independent and fair assessment, they charged, seeking re-assessment.

They said Shimla was not selected even after a fair assessment. Dharamsala has no details about electronic municipal budget expenditure on its website.

Similarly, the city has also fudged points with respect to accounts and finance. “Dharamsala is not using “double entry accounting software” implemented in the Shimla MC since 2007,” they added.

Dharamsala inclusion hailed

Chief Parliamentary Secretaries Neeraj Bharti and Jagjeevan Pal, MLAs Ajay Mahajan, Manohar Dhiman, Sanjay Rattan, Yadvinder Goma, Pawan Kajal and Kishori Lal and Vice Chairman State Forest Development Corporation Kewal Singh Pathania today welcomed the inclusion of Dharamshala city in the Smart City Mission.

Thanking Chief Minister Virbhadra Singh and Urban Development Minister Sudhir Sharma for their consistent endeavours to include Dharamsala in the Smart City Mission, they said Dharamsala had been selected on the basis of competition. The city would get financial assistance of Rs 500 crore during the project period of five years.

People would get water supply, sewerage and seepage management, lighting, free wi-fi services, smart service delivery through e-district project, proper municipal solid waste management and better transport system, etc.