The yearly Budget of the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) on Wednesday focused on smart city project to make Delhi a world-class city. From solar city project to waste-to-energy plant, replacing existing 18,500 streetlights to lED, installing CCTV cameras and enabling multiple next generation digital services based on WiFi/2G/3G/4G within the NDMC area were the major highlights of the budget.
With surplus amount of Rs27 crore, the NDMC projected a total receipt of Rs3,153.2 crore as against the estimated expenditure of Rs3,126.22 crore. The Budget also announced big relief to the property owners in the area as no hike was announced for next fiscal year.
Announcing the council’s annual Budget, NMC chairman Jalaj Shrivastava talked about the various initiatives taken to bring Delhi at par with other smart cities across the world. “Basic premise of a smart city is making infrastructure network and delivery of services for the common man speedier and more effective and efficient. A smart city cannot have only a few hours of water supply a day, or power outages, or its streets and public places littered with garbage,” he said.
Among the major initiatives announced in the Budget was the replacement of 18,500 streetlight poles with lED lights fitted with CCTV cameras and creation of WiFi access points. Also, a chain of Waste-to-Energy (WTE) plants are to be set up in various NDMC areas and the Solar City project would also be taken up.
The civic body has allocated Rs150.37 crore for education services, including for the setting up of technology-enabled classrooms in five NDMC schools, a state-of-the-art technical institute for boys for job-oriented skill development on the lines of ITIs and establishment of library-cum-reading rooms in four areas of which two will be for boys and the remaining for girls.
“The council generates around 94 per cent of its receipts through its own internal resources, which mainly include fee and user charges, licence fees from municipal properties, property tax and electricity tax and interest,” Srivastava said.
There was no increase announced in the property tax rates. As part of its ‘Urja project’ aimed at empowering women, it also announced that a ‘Shakti cab’ service would be launched to cater to female passengers. “As a pilot project, women commercial drivers/pass outs of NDMC’s Women’s Technical Institute (WTI) would be plying these cabs with the provision for security guards in night shifts apart from GPS,” said the NDMC chairman.