Ludhiana Smart City projects move at snail's pace

Jun 28,2022

Ludhiana Smart City projects move at snail's pace

Kuldip Bhatia

Ludhiana, June 28

While the Municipal Corporation (MC) celebrated the 7th anniversary of Smart City Mission in a function at Sarabha Nagar on Friday, the ground reality is that many crucial projects are yet to be completed. Though the number of projects under the scheme had been increased to 75 (earlier 47), residents of the supposed ‘Smart City’ are suffering due to temporary problems being created by ongoing works.

While the Ludhiana Smart City Limited (LSCL) – the special purpose vehicle set up for execution of projects worth around Rs 930 crore, claimed that 29 projects had been completed, many projects such as multi-level car parking, sports complex, providing road furniture and safety fixtures and digital library still hang fire.

With the Commissioner of the Municipal Corporation having been given additional charge of the CEO of the LSCL, most of the Smart City projects were, more or less, progressing at a snail’s pace.

As per information obtained from the MC, at least 13 Smart City projects, including construction of ROB and RUB on Pakhowal Road, providing machinery, equipment and infrastructure for solid waste management, beautification of Jagraon Bridge, installation of CCTVs, fencing along Budha Nullah, supply of canal-based water supply, management of construction and demolition (C&D) waste and upgrade of firefighting system, have long crossed their deadlines.

To make the matters worse, some of the projects that had been fully or partly completed such as conversion of Malhar Road as ‘Smart road’ and beautification of Sarabha Nagar main market, had rather generated unsavoury controversies with the shopkeepers and locals putting up strong objections to curtailment of width, lack of adequate parking facility and use of sub-standard material (interlocking tiles) on Malhar Road.

Meanwhile, Sanjay Goel, one of the directors of LSCL, in a communication to Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, suggested that for better results many projects of similar nature in upcoming smart cities could have been better controlled directly at the central level to save time, energy and money.

He remarked that the absence of a permanent Chief Executive officer (CEO) in upcoming smart city, giving dual charge to existing commissioner (of MC), who were frequently transferred, had been a major drawback in execution of the projects.

He also emphasised on the need for constitution of committees at the city-level to monitor ongoing works, dedicated staff specially planners, architects, consultants, engineers and long-term planning (for at least next 50 years) with active involvement of the city residents in both at planning and execution levels.