INVC NEWS
Shimla,
The implementation of AMRUT scheme has been started and Rs 25 lakhs have been released by the government of India for preparation of City Level Implementation Plan (CLIP) for the Shimla city and SAAP (State Annual Action Plan) for the state.
Urban Development and Town & Country Planning Minister Shri Sudhir Sharma disclosed this here today. He said Rs. 79.41 crores had already been allocated for Shimla for the current year and Shimla had the opportunity to undertake smart development of the city.
He said Shimla city had qualified under AMRUT Mission and Dharmshala had been chosen under Smart Cities Mission (SCM) schemes of government of India. He said the selection of AMRUT city was on the basis of population of the city and the cities with the population of one lakh or more qualifies to be included in the scheme. However, the selection of Smart City is purely on the competition basis. As per present status, only Shimla’s population is more than one Lakh, so Shimla automatically qualified for AMRUT Mission from the State of Himachal Pradesh.
These schemes had been launched to develop urban areas and provide basic infrastructure like water supply, sewerage and seepage management, storm water drainage, urban transport, e-governance, capacity building and institutional strengthening etc in urban areas of the cities selected as per the laid down criteria and guidelines.
Shri Sudhir Sharma said the selection of Smart City, as per guidelines was purely based upon the competition criteria to ascertain the capacity and willingness of the cities to become smart. As per these criteria, Himachal Pradesh got one city to be developed as smart city. The Scoring criteria include existing service levels, institutional systems and capacities of ULBs, self-financing of ULBs, past track records and efficiency of implementation of JNNURM schemes and programmes.
He said based on MoUD scoring criteria for Smart City Selection, the Directorate of Urban Development Department requested all 53 ULBs in the State to complete the score card to finalize the city from the State. Up to the cut-off date for submission of score card, the Directorate received score card from 14 ULBs. On the basis of criterion fixed by GoI, Dharamshala scored 87.5% whereas Shimla scored 85% and was placed in second place.
The Minister said major reason for Shimla being placed in the second place was extremely poor implementation and non-completion of projects sanctioned under JNNURM scheme it scored zero marks out of five in
score card. Schemes such as rehabilitation of water supply distribution system for Shimla city (72.36 crores), rejuvenation of sewerage network in missing lines and left out areas/worn out sewerage in various zones of Shimla Phase-I (54.74 crore), Ashiana 1, E-Governance project (20 crore) were not even started and GOI had to cancel these projects.
On the contrary, Dharamshala got full five marks as efficiency of implementation of projects sanctioned for Dharamsala under UIDSSMT component of JNNURM was 100% and as a result it scored better under this scoring criteria, he added.
