Smart City: State to tie up with European cities

Pratibha Chauhan

Tribune News Service

Shimla, July 15

To work out the modalities for the implementation of the Smart City solutions for Dharamsala and seek global expertise in high end services, Himachal is looking for partnership towards municipalities in Germany, France, Netherlands, Sweden and Austria.

With Dharamsala being selected in the list of Smart Cities by the Union Urban Development (UD) Ministry, the Himachal Government will be seeking global expertise in various sectors from some of the municipalities in Europe and Scandinavia. Urban Development Minister Sudhir Sharma, Director (UD) JM Pathania and an engineer from the Dharamshala Municipal Corporation will undertake a weeklong tour of Germany and Vienna from tomorrow.

The team will hold meeting with the European Smart City Association so that the high end services under the smart city proposal for Dharamsala can be rolled out. Even though the consultants will be engaged through global bidding but the team headed by the minister will invite some of the municipalities like Hamburg and Hagen in Germany and Vienna in Austria to tie up with Himachal in implementation of the first Smart City project of the state.

Himachal could explore the possibility of having sister city partnership with Hamburg and Hagen City in Germany.

Under these smart city solutions, the residents will receive 24X7 water and power supply, advanced sewerage facilities, multi-modal transport system, amusement parks and landscaping, IT solutions and solar lighting. “Though the Urban Development Department will engage consultants through global bidding we want to hold interaction with some of these municipalities, which are quite similar to ours so that they know what we are looking for and we too can modify as per the market requirements,” said JM Pathania, Director, Urban Development.

A sum of Rs 1,000 crore will be spent on developing Dharamsala as a Smart City over a period of five years. A sum of Rs 670 crore will be raised through private public partnership (PPP) and about Rs 265 crore through convergence with Central schemes.

The Urban Development department is in the process of creating a Special Purpose Vehicle Dharamsala Smart City Corporation. Netherlands Embassy IIT Roorkee and Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) have offered to provide expertise in various areas to develop the city and partner in rolling out the facilities to the residents.