Vellore Corp is ready for Central Govt’s Smart City project

Vellore Corp is ready for Central Govt’s Smart City project

J Shanmugha Sundaram/ Published on July 14

Vellore: The Vellore Corporation is gearing up for the Central Government’s Smart City project and taking efforts to meet the parameters laid by the State and Central Governments.

The local body is preparing to match the guidelines laid down by the Commissionerate of Municipal Administration (CMA), Commissioner of the Corporation Janaki Raveendran told Express.

The 60-member council gave its approval for a resolution placed before it on Monday about the Smart City project.  It reads that “the local body is ready to follow the guidelines laid down by the Central and State Governments under Smart City project and is also thanking the government for proposing the city for the project.”  It has been forwarded to the CMA.

Under the project, the selected city would receive a grant of Rs 100 crore per year for five years. The Tamil Nadu Government has proposed all the 12 Corporations in the state for the project. “The CMA has devised certain parameters and will award marks for the corporations based on its performance and meeting its guidelines such as prioritising the needs and demands of the local body. We will follow the guidelines to the best to score over other municipalities,” she added.

The Corporation has already studied civic issues and needs of the City that resulted in the City Development Plan. Water crisis, sanitation and traffic were the major issues in the Corporation limit and the local body has prioritised it.

 “We have also completed the comprehensive mobility plan with the help of State Government’s agency TNUIFSL (Tamil Nadu Urban Infrastructure Financial Services Ltd) to decongest the traffic in the city. The plan was ready by last year itself,” she further said.

The local body is also ready with ‘cluster method’ to tackle waste. Under this method, the corporation would take efforts to turn the waste into energy. “At present, we are dumping the 230 metric tonnes of waste that is generated per day in the dumping yard. We will opt for cluster method to segregate the waste and turn that into resource. We are in the process of identifying a suitable site for the project,” she further said./eom/shan/