Close on the heels of the city improving its ranking in Swachh Survekshan 2019, Bengaluru's ranking under Smart City has also seen an improvement from 74 to 30. However, the jump in ranking is only for floating tenders and issuing work orders. Actual work on the project is yet to begin.
Senior civic officials conceded that work is not likely to be taken up any time soon. “If Lok Sabha elections are announced, we will not be able to take up any work even though work orders have been issued, as it will be a violation of the model code of conduct,” an official said.
Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) Commissioner N. Manjunath Prasad told The Hindu that Bengaluru was the last city to be chosen from Karnataka for the Smart City project. The cities from Karnataka that have been chosen for the project are Belagavi, Davangere, Hubballi, Mangaluru, Shivamogga, Tumakuru and Bengaluru.
“Soon after being chosen, we drew up a list of projects for ₹2,156 crore, of which the Centre's contribution is ₹500 crore over a period of five years,” he said.
The ranking, he explained, is given based on the number of projects for which tenders have been floated and the number of work orders issued for the project implementation. “A Special Purpose Vehicle was created. We began to work immediately on getting the detailed project reports ready, following which the tender were floated,” he said.
Mr. Prasad said the BBMP had already floated tenders for taking up TenderSURE work on 20 roads at a cost of ₹255 crore, and work orders have been issued for the same. The civic body has also issued the work orders for converting all street lights into LED lights under a public-private partnership project at a cost of ₹800 crore.
Recently, the BBMP had floated a tender to take up TenderSURE work on 16 select roads, apart from revamping of K.R. Market, a heritage structure. The two tenders are worth around ₹250 crore.
