Dehradun misses Smart City bandwagon, residents blame authorities

The proposal drafted by Dehradun was based on retrofitting of areas like Chakrata Road, Gandhi Park, Saharanpur Road, Yamuna Colony and others, while residents blame authorities for lack of preparation

Yeshika Budhwar
  • Updated On May 25, 2016 at 02:13 PM IST

DEHRADUN: The capital city has yet again missed the Smart City bandwagon. While the administration sought to derive the solace in the fact that Dehradun missed the opportunity by a "whisker", the residents blamed them for not doing proper “homework”.
The Union government on Tuesday announced the list of 13 cities which made it to the Smart Cities list. Dehradun’s name was not in the list while Lucknow was on the top.

Meenakshi Sundaram, vice chairman, Mussoorie Dehradun Development Authority (MDDA), who has been appointed as the nodal officer for the smart city project told TOI, “We are still waiting to hear from Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD) about the reasons because of which we have not made it to the list.”

The proposal drafted by Dehradun was based on retrofitting of areas like Chakrata Road, Gandhi Park, Saharanpur Road, Yamuna Colony and others.

Meanwhile, a few residents feel that this was bound to happen because of the lack of preparation by the officials.
“The authorities did not do their homework and failed to realise that the citizens want retrofitting for the whole city and not just of a few parts. The proposal could have been made more innovative and eco-friendly like other cities. But that was not done,” said Mahesh Bhandari, president of Doon Residents’ Welfare Front.

However, Nitin Bhaduria, commissioner Nagar Nigam was more optimistic about the results.

“We have done better than the last time since we scored 52 points and 54 points is the cut off so we just missed by a whisker. Also, the ranking improved as compared to the previous list. We were ranked 97 out of the 100 cities last time, against this time where we were ranked 17 out of 23 cities.”

Ravinder Jugran, a city-based social and political activist said, “The state government was keen on grabbing the tea garden land for smart city project. It lost the direction after that opportunity was lost. This is the reason that their proposal did not qualify for smart city project.”

  • Published On May 25, 2016 at 02:00 PM IST
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