Under the Smart Cities Mission, the selected city would receive ₹500 crore from the central government and a matching grant by the State government.
But crucially, the city had to raise a matching capital of ₹1,000 crore from the market, taking the total funding for the project to ₹2,000 crore.
Sources said the city has not made any significant effort to raise capital from the market.
Replacing all street lights
Hephsiba Rani Korlapati, Managing Director, Bengaluru Smart City Pvt. Ltd., said projects carried out under the Public Private Partnership were part of the market capital component, and the city was replacing all street lights with solar powered ones at a cost of ₹800 crore. However, the LED street lights project was taken up by Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) much before even the city was selected by the Smart Cities Mission, and experts wondered how this is now part of the Smart Cities Mission.
“The BBMP is famous for ‘Hale Kallu, Hosa Billu’ — a novel way of duplication of projects. LED street lights project being included under Smart City project seems exactly that,” said urbanist Ashwin Mahesh.
