MC cash crunch to persist as 3 projects hit the wall

The Municipal Corporation is unlikely to tide over its financial crisis soon as none of its proposed revenue-generation projects are making any headway.

Big claims were made a few months ago that the projects would bring huge revenue to the civic body, but the plans continue to remain on papers.

The proposed housing project of Manimajra is held up as the UT Environment Department clarified that it required environmental clearance before launch. Getting the environmental clearance is not easy as it involved fulfilling several formalities. Besides, the UT Administration has still not clarified to the civic body regarding the provision for construction of houses for economical weaker sections (EWS).

It is unclear how many EWS flats have to be constructed by the builder.

The MC General House had approved the terms and conditions of auction of over 7.5 acres for a housing project in pocket number 6 of Manimajra. The land is spread across five different chunks. The auction of the project is likely to generate over Rs 800 crore for the cash-starved civic body.

The MC is presently facing its worst financial crisis as it has no funds for the development. It hoped to overcome the crisis by selling the land.

With an aim to generate more revenue, the MC had passed an agenda for e-auction of 75 advertisement panels and unipoles in the city. But the tender for the unipoles have not been floated so far. The MC was planning to make over Rs 75 crore from the auction of the advertisement rights on unipoles.

Its another project, AI-enabled smart parking system, has not seen the light of the day too. A committee under the chairmanship of councillor Saurabh Joshi had prepared the Request of Proposal for the system, the MC House is yet to give it the green light. Councillors have raised several objections to the proposal.

The project aims to transform Chandigarh’s parking infrastructure through technology-driven solutions and fetch the MC over Rs 60 crore per month.

When contacted, Mayor Harpreet Kaur Babla said she had been vigorously pursuing the projects with the authorities and hoped that these would be executed soon.

Meanwhile, a fresh tender for the allotment of sanitation work in southern sectors (31 to 63) has also not been approved so far. The term of the current firm, Lions Services Limited, has been completed. The corporation pays the company approximately Rs 50 crores annually (Rs 4 crores every month) for the work.