Under AMRUT, 215 Projects worth Rs. 157 Crores
completed, 1606 Projects worth Rs. 32,459 Crores at various stages of Implementation
National Workshop on Accelerating
Implementation of Urban Missions: AMRUT and smart Cities
The Integrated Command & Control Center projects which enable
fast and efficient citizen service delivery in an integrated way, are being
developed in 20 cities and are already operational in cities like Pune, Surat,
Vadodara, producing positive results. 10 more cities have issued tenders for
developing command and control centers in their cities. This was stated by Sh
Hardeep S Puri while addressing a National
workshop on Accelerating Implementation of Urban Missions:. AMRUT and SMART
CITIES here today. Delivering his inaugural address at the workshop, the
Minister informed that for smart reuse and
wastewater projects, 33 cities have issued tenders, and work has begun in 16 of
them. In order to promote
renewable energy usage in the cities, projects for providing Solar projects on
rooftops of government buildings have been encouraged. Till date, 44 cities
have issued tenders, and work has begun in 38 cities. Most of these cities have
completed their projects, he further informed. Sh Durga Shankar Mishra,
Secretary in the Ministry, Commissioners, Chief
Executive Officers (CEOs), Principal Secretaries of Housing and Urban
Development Departments of States were present at the workshop.
Informing
about the Smart Cities Challenge, Sh Puri stated that it promoted an increase
in participatory activities and means of citizen engagement at the city and
neighbourhood levels. More than 24 lakh citizens were consulted through MyGov
website and almost 120 lakh through other means. “The challenge is to conduct
citizen consultation during implementation. The officials at city, state &
centre levels, have put in tireless efforts from conceptualization to roll out
and implementation of these missions”, he added.
The AMRUT and Smart Cities Missions can be seen as inter-linked
programmes where AMRUT follows a project-based approach and Smart Cities
Mission an area-based strategy. Although area based approach is not new, the
way Smart City is conceptualized, it is meant to set examples that can be
replicated both within and outside the Smart City. It is, therefore, expected
to catalyse creation of similar Smart Cities in various parts of the country,
Sh Puri further added.
Providing details about the progress made under AMRUT, the
Minister informed that the city-wise service level improvement plans (SLIP) for
all the 500 cities and State Annual Action Plans (SAAP) for all the 36
States/UTs with a project investment worth Rs. 77,640 crores were approved,
much ahead of time to enable timely planning and execution. Under AMRUT, 215
projects worth Rs. 157 crores have already been completed, 1606 projects worth Rs.
32,459 crores are at various stages of implementation and about 1800 projects
worth Rs. 23, 568 crores are under tendering stage.
Sh Puri also provided the details of the three-tiered
approach being followed by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs for states
and cities to implement the reform Agenda as follows: “First Tier: the
performance grant of the 14th finance commission of about Rs 18000 Crore is
used to accelerate on-going key financial and service level reforms in cities.
The 14th Finance Commission gave recommendations for assured transfers to
Local Bodies for a period of five years (2015-16 to 2019-20). A total of Rs.
87143.80 crores will be transferred to Municipalities during the award period.
These grants are being transferred in two parts – Basic Grant and Performance
Grant (in the ratio 80:20). We have revised the conditions in order to ensure
that cities become financially self-sufficient. Second Tier: AMRUT
Reforms consisted of launch of 11 Urban management and governance reforms
comprising of 54 milestones. These reforms have been achieved by all the States
/ cities. Hence we added five more to the new list of AMRUT New Reforms which
included Value Capture Financing, credit rating and Municipal bonds, municipal
cadre professionalization, trust and verify approach for frontline services
like building permissions and land titling. Third Tier: Incentive fund
with a focus on ‘rapid’ and transformational reforms along
the three main pillars: governance, planning, and financing focusing on
strengthening devolution, own source revenue mobilization, and flexible urban
planning. These reforms will enhance downstream accountability mechanisms like
making local ward committees responsible for O&M of projects etc. The focus
is on big ticket policy reforms at the state level as a priority and also to
strike a balance by including an aligned set of reform for cities (more at
operational, implementation level). The idea also is to avoid any duplicity
with the AMRUT or CFC reforms as much as possible. The plan is to design the
incentive mechanism for these big ticket reforms as a challenge where in states
and cities compete against each other and are incentivised for their
performance in reform implementation.”
Sh
Mishra informed that this workshop aims to provide a platform to learn from
each other’s experiences of success and challenges faced to accelerate the
progress of work. It will allow cities to leapfrog in implementation. The focus
of the daylong workshop is on three things – implementation, implementation and
implementation, he added. Providing details of the sessions he informed that
the focus of the panel discussions is on
·
Digitally
Integrated Smart Solutions through Command and Control Centers
·
Street
Re-design and Smart Roads
·
Development
of public domain such as squares/ public spaces/ and rejuvenation of lakes
·
Impactful
projects, and Implementation of AMRUT
***
RJ
