Srinagar Smart City Mission

Chief Secretary Atul Dulloo has directed the concerned authorities to accelerate the pace of progress on all the development works. He gave the direction during a meeting in Srinagar recently. The meeting reviewed the status of different ongoing projects of Smart City Mission (SCM) in the twin cities of Srinagar and Jammu. It also assessed other schemes of Housing and Urban Development Department (H&UDD) under implementation in J&K.

The slow pace of development works causes lot of inconvenience to the people and also affects the business in the markets. Roads and drains have been dug up at a number of places during the ongoing works. Frequent traffic jamming occurs in these areas particularly during the peak hours of morning and evening. Subsequently, there are difficulties in vehicular traffic and pedestrian movement. Several mishaps have also occured as moving vehicles fell into the dug up roads and drains. The people say that they are not against the development and that they are with every move to develop the city. They only ask for meeting the deadlines of the works.

According to them while the work has been started but the pace of the work is slow at several places. The exceedingly slow pace and subsequent delay not only causes inconvenience to local residents but also hits the business of traders and thus the state exchequer. So the pace of the work has to be accelerated. The authorities must take full advantage of these summer months and get the works completed. In winter, there are more problems.

Snowfall, rains and cold affect the progress of the work. According to the authorities, out of 184 projects for Srinagar Smart City Limited (SSCL), 114 have been completed and rest are under progress. They added that most of the under progress projects are at advanced stages of work and are expected to be dedicated to public by September this year. For Jammu Smart City Limited (JSCL), out of 127 projects 117 have been completed and 10 are at different stages of completion. It is being hoped that all projects in Srinagar and Jammu are completed within the fixed deadlines. There should not be any unnecessary delay. The directions from the top have to be implemented on the ground in letter and spirit.