Meeting of the Smart City advisory committee held under chairmanship of MP Manish Tewari 

Chandigarh, February 17, 2025: A meeting of the Smart City advisory committee was held today morning at 9:00 a.m. It was chaired by Manish Tewari, Member of Parliament and former Union Minister for Information and Broadcasting, Government of India.

The meeting was attended by the mayor of Chandigarh Harpreet Kaur Babla, the commissioner of the Municipal Corporation Amit Kumar, the Deputy Commissioner of Chandigarh Nishant Yadav and other officials of the Chandigarh Smart City mission. Since the budgetary allocation for the Smart City mission in the union budget is zero for the next financial year, 2025-26 and the mission is coming to an end. 

It was felt that the projects, which have been executed over the past 10 year, during the course of this mission, should be reviewed.

Tewari asked as to how much money had been spent in the past 10 years on the different projects. 

The officers of the Smart City mission informed the chairperson that in all 853 crores had been spent over 36 projects and 53 crores as operating expenditure is still lying with them. 

Tewari asked a conceptual question, as to what really makes a city smart, as to what is a definition of a Smart City. 

A question which he had asked the last time also, which provided an array of answers, but didn't satisfactorily addressed the answer. 

Out of the 853 crores, roughly about 304 crores were spent on setting up sewage treatment plant project, 

334 crores were spent on setting up an integrated command and control complex and the remaining money was spent on a number of ancillary projects. 

Tewari wanted to know that given the fact that the Smart City mission will end on March, 2025, who will take responsibility for all the assets which have been created over the past 10 years during the duration of the mission. 

Tewari was informed at the different departments of the government would then take responsibility for these projects, for example the integrated command and control centre would be transferred to the department of Information and technology, while the STPs etc would be transferred to the Municipal Corporation. 

Tewari expressed very serious concern over the fact that the 24×7 water supply project, which was implemented in Mani Majra out of the Smart City scheme, even after 8 months only 2 hours of water in the morning and 2 hours of water in the evening were being provided to the residents of Mani Majra. 

He wanted to know as to why this  type of commitment was made that 24×7 water supply would be provided, but only 4 hours of water is being provided. 

He further added that it has been brought to his attention that over three different sets of pipelines, where laid in Mani Majra over the past five years and wanted to know as to why so many different sets of pipelines were laid and if there was one set of pipelines which was already available, why was it not used for the 24×7 water supply project. 

Tewari also wanted to know whether any external audit or performance audit or technical audit of the schemes of the various projects implemented under Smart City had been carried out by any external agency  or by government/ C&AG.

In Conclusion, Tewari advised the officers of the Smart City that due care must be taken to ensure that the assets which have been created under the Smart City mission, must  be used in a efficacious and efficient manner and just because of Smart City mission is coming to an end they should not get completely wasted and go to seed .