IN: Punjab: Mission Smart City crawls, with only 15 of 124 projects completed and 76 yet to take off
Only 15 out of the 124 proposed under the Smarty City Mission in three Punjab cities have been completed, a performance audit by the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has revealed. The CAG found that only seven of the proposed 43 projects in Ludhiana, five of 32 in Amritsar and three of 49 in Jalandhar could be completed by October 2020.
The CAG audited the urban local bodies in Punjab for the period April 2015 to March 2020 and the report was tabled in the Vidhan Sabha during the recently concluded budget session.
Ludhiana was selected by the Government of India in its first list of 20 cities in 2016 to be developed as a "Smart City". Amritsar and Jalandhar were selected in the subsequent batches.
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The CAG report states that Centre in June 2015 had launched the Smart Cities Mission with an aim to cover 100 cities in five years — upto June 2020. The objective was to promote cities that provide core infrastructure and give a decent quality of life to its citizens. The mission was to be implemented at city level through Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) promoted by the respective state governments.
The audit found that three SPVs — Amritsar Smart City Limited (ASCL), Jalandhar Smart City Limited (JSCL), and Ludhiana Smart City Limited (LSCL) — were constituted under the Punjab Municipal Infrastructure Development Company (PMIDC), a nodal agency, for implementation of SCM.
"However, as of October 2020, out of 124 projects amounting to Rs 3071.38 crore, only 15 (12.10 per cent) were completed by incurring expenditure of Rs 40.69 crore. The remaining projects were either under progress or yet to be started," read the report.
The report states that of 32 projects in Amritsar, 18 were yet to start while nine were under progress. Similarly, of 49 projects in Jalandhar, 34 are yet to start while 12 were under progress and of 43 in Ludhiana, 24 were yet to start and 12 were under progress.
The CAG report adds: "The department though provided (August 2021) the updated status of the projects under the Mission, it did not supply any document in support thereof. It was added that the Mission period has been extended up to March 2023 by GoI."
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Divya Goyal
Quelle/Source: msn, 10.07.2022
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