The Dehradun smart city proposal failed to secure a place among the 13 smart city proposals selected in the second round of fast track competition organised by the Union Government. Dehradun is among the 10 smart city proposals which couldn’t pass this round. There is still some scope left for Dehradun’s proposal as according to the Minister of Urban Development and Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation, M Venkaiah Naidu, these 10 cities can submit their revised smart city plans for evaluation in the second round of the ongoing regular competition by the end of June.
The State Government has expressed disappointment but observers point out that apart from public opposition to construct the proposed smart city on tea gardens, there were other aspects in Dehradun’s proposal due to which it could not not achieve a better ranking even among the 23 cities which participated in the second round of the Smart City Challenge.
Of the total smart city proposals from 23 cities participating in the second round, lucknow smart city proposal tops the list of 13 proposals which were selected in the second round. Dehradun managed to achieve 17th rank among the 23 proposals in the second round. The other smart cities which did not pass the second round include Namchi in Sikkim which was ranked 14, Aizawl in Mizoram (15), Pasighat in Arunachal Pradesh (16), Kohima in Nagaland (18), Oulgaret in Puducherry (19), Silvassa, Dadra, Nagar and Haveli(20), Kavaratti from lakshdweep(21), Diu in Daman and Diu (22) and Shillong in Meghalaya(23). These cities can submit their revised smart city plans for evaluation in the second round of the regular competition underway by the end of June.
Addressing deficiencies in their plans, the 13 cities selected in the second round were said to have substantially improved their smart city plans with better city profiling in terms of infrastructure gaps and baseline service levels, ensuring consistency between citizens’ aspirations and action plans, more feasible resource mobilisation plans along with coordinated and integrated picture of how individual projects will contribute to area level changes.
It will be recalled that the Dehradun smart city proposal had elicited controversy since the start with public groups and political parties strongly opposing the plan for using the tea gardens for the project. The proposal was first based on greenfield area development which was stated to be the cause of its failure in the first round as all the proposals based on greenfield area development were rejected in the initial round.
The State authorities then altered the proposal into one based on the retrofitting concept. The Mussoorie Dehradun Development Authority had stepped up efforts to make it past the second round. Of the 23 cities that had worked their proposals for re-submission, Dehradun had elicited maximum public response with more than 28,000 votes being received on the proposal from the public online. However, evidently this alone was not enough to succeed in the second round.