Odisha is likely to get two smart cities, but not out of gratis.
It has to undergo a rigorous two-stage competition – first at the state level and then at the national level.
Short-listed cities of the state will have to compete with 98 others across the country to get the coveted smart city tag.
While the Centre will finance the top 20 cities with an annual grant of Rs 100 crore for five years, the remaining 80 contenders will vie for the next 40 slots in the next financial year. The remaining 40 will get the funds in the third year.
“The challenges before our cities are many. They have to show how much prepared they are to take up infrastructure projects. The citizens will have to take part in the preparation of the smart city plan and it has to be seen how many of those could be implemented. The cities will also have to score high on their past track record, especially performance under Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM),” said special secretary in the state urban development department S.K. Ratho, who attended the launching and follow up conference in New Delhi on Thursday.
“The greatest challenge before the contending urban local bodies will be their capacity to generate revenue internally and how much they can leverage from the private funding,” said Ratho.
Odisha has been allocated two cities that will compete for the smart tag.
It has to shortlist two cities out of nine urban centres – Bhubaneswar, Cuttack, Berhampur, Sambalpur and Rourkela (all five are municipal corporations) and the municipalities of Baripada, Balasore, Bhadrak and Puri. Each of these nine urban centres have a population of one lakh and more.
During the stage-1 competition, the scores will be on the existing service levels (25 points), institutional systems and capacities (15 points), self-financing (30 points) and past track record (30 points).
A potential smart city needs to have adequate water supply, assured electricity supply, sanitation (including solid waste management), efficient urban mobility and public transport, affordable housing, robust IT connectivity and digitisation, e-governance and citizen participation, sustainable environment, safety and security of citizens and health and education.
Bhubaneswar being the state capital and a planned city stands a good chance to win the smart tag.
The city is perhaps the only civic body in Odisha with many “smart solutions” already in place such as IT applications for grievance redress and jan suvidha kendras under e-municipality, installation of closed-circuit cameras to check crime and traffic violation and monitoring. These will come as a plus point for Bhubaneswar.
The mobile application software (app) of the civic body is now available on Android, iOS and Windows platforms. In the energy management front, the use of light emitting diode (LED) technology-based street lights in place of traditional lights have given a new identity to the city because it will help lower the energy bill up to 80 per cent.
While a waste-to-energy plant is in the pipeline at a proposed site near Bhuasuni on the city outskirts, on the waste water management front, the smart metering, leakage identification and adoption of preventive measures are yet to be made functional.
Urban mobility through a city-bus service initiated by the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission is there, but parking is still an issue with many streets chock-a-block with vehicles. Encroachment of land within the civic limits has also remained a stumbling block.
Mayor Ananta Narayan Jena said: “We are hoping to make our city listed as a smart one as Bhubaneswar has initiated many citizen-centric applications and is ahead of many others.”
Urban development practitioner Piyush Ranjan Rout said: “Bhubaneswar is a historic city with a religious collage involving Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism. After the smart city challenge, we must eye the world heritage site tag.”