Guwahati: Assam’s capital city, Guwahati, has lost out on the Indian Smart City Award (ISCA) announced by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) under the Smart Cities Mission (SCM).
Guwahati had contested in the urban mobility category but was not successful. The city was unable to contest in other categories as it had not implemented the projects for those categories.
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Kohima (Nagaland) and Namchi (Sikkim) were awarded under the Zonal Smart City Award (Northeast Zone) category.
The other categories for the award were: Built Environment, Culture, Economy, Governance, ICCC Business Model, Mobility, Sanitation, Social Aspects, Urban Environment, Water, Innovative Idea Award, COVID-19 Innovation Award, and Partner Award (for industry players).
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Guwahati was one of the first 20 cities selected to be transformed into a smart city, to provide core infrastructure, a clean and sustainable environment, and a decent quality of life to its citizens through the application of smart solutions.
“The delay in implementation is the only reason why Guwahati lost out. Not a single project taken up by Guwahati Smart City Ltd (GSCL) has been completed. Even though GSCL started functioning in 2016, not a single project was taken up till 2021. Rs 396 crores funds received from the centre remained unutilized till 2021,” said a retired official of GSCL.
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The Integrated Traffic Management Project, which was expected to be completed within March 2023, is yet to be fully implemented. Apart from a few initiatives like the water ATMs, bio-toilets, and the tallest national flag at the Gandhi Mandap, no significant project has been completed by the GSCL,” the official said.
Indore won the national smart city award, while Madhya Pradesh received the state award and Chandigarh received the UT award.
A total of 845 nominations were received for ISAC 2022 from 80 qualifying smart cities.
Of these, under the five award categories, 66 final winners have been identified – 35 in the Project award, six in the Innovation award, 13 in National/Zonal City award, five in state/UT Award and seven in Partner Award categories.
Coimbatore took the top spot for built environment, Ahmedabad for culture and Integrated Command and Control Centre (ICCC) category, Jabalpur for economy, Chandigarh for governance and mobility, Indore for sanitation, water and urban environment, Vadodara for social aspects, Hubballi-Dharwad for the innovative idea category and Surat for COVID-19 innovation category.
In addition to this, the partner award for the industry has been given to Enviro Control Private (infrastructure), L&T Construction and PwC.
President Droupadi Murmu will felicitate the winners of ISAC 2022 awards on September 27 in Indore.