By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, DEC 09, 2017: THE Integrated Command & Control Center projects which enable fast and efficient citizen service delivery in an integrated way, are being developed in 20 cities and are already operational in cities like Pune, Surat, Vadodara, producing positive results. Ten more cities have issued tenders for developing command and control centers in their cities. This was stated by Mr Hardeep S Puri while addressing a National workshop on Accelerating Implementation of Urban Missions:. AMRUT and SMART CITIES here yesterday.

Delivering his inaugural address at the workshop, the Minister informed that for smart reuse and wastewater projects, 33 cities have issued tenders, and work has begun in 16 of them. In order to promote renewable energy usage in the cities, projects for providing Solar projects on rooftops of government buildings have been encouraged. Till date, 44 cities have issued tenders, and work has begun in 38 cities. Most of these cities have completed their projects, he further informed.

Informing about the Smart Cities Challenge, Mr Puri stated that it promoted an increase in participatory activities and means of citizen engagement at the city and neighbourhood levels. More than 24 lakh citizens were consulted through MyGov website and almost 120 lakh through other means. “The challenge is to conduct citizen consultation during implementation. The officials at city, state & centre levels, have put in tireless efforts from conceptualization to roll out and implementation of these missions”, he added.

The AMRUT and Smart Cities Missions can be seen as inter-linked programmes where AMRUT follows a project-based approach and Smart Cities Mission an area-based strategy. Although area based approach is not new, the way Smart City is conceptualized, it is meant to set examples that can be replicated both within and outside the Smart City. It is, therefore, expected to catalyse creation of similar Smart Cities in various parts of the country, he further added.