Bhubaneswar: The Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited (BSCL) and Rourkela Smart City Limited (RSCL) failed to achieve their targets as the special purpose vehicles (SPVs) spent only 36 per cent and 37 per cent of the allocated funds for the projects, respectively, approved as per their Smart City Plans (SCPs) till March 2022, resulting in the cities’ poor performance in the smart city rankings, according to the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG).
In its recently released report, the auditor said BSCL took up projects worth Rs 1,621.94 crore against the target of Rs 4,537 crore with a 41 per cent reduction in the number of Area Based Development (ABD) projects. “There were plans for 56 ABD projects worth Rs 4,096 crore in the case of BSCL. However, it undertook only 33 projects worth Rs 939.85 crore,” the report said. The RSCL, which was supposed to take up Rs 2,571 crore projects, executed initiatives worth Rs 950.46 crore. Although the number of planned ABD projects increased from 30 to 59 in case of RSCL, the corresponding investment was reduced 50 per cent – from Rs 1,702.24 crore to Rs 844.49 crore.
In case of Pan City projects, the investment was reduced to Rs 106.42 crore from the planned Rs 869.03 crore although the number of projects remained constant at one, it said. “In March 2023, the state government attributed the reduction in ABD projects to reasons like non-availability of funds and encroachment-free land. The reply was unacceptable as SPVs like BSCL and RSCL were responsible for mobilising funds and coordinating with other departments for related issues,” the CAG said. The auditor said the performance of the SPVs deprived the cities’ dwellers of the envisaged benefits. “As a consequence, both the cities lost their rankings as smart cities drastically as stated supra,” it said. The audit observed that the ranking of smart cities is done through Geospatial Management Information System (GMIS), a management information system, developed by Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), based on basic parameters like physical progress of work and various outcomes and impacts being generated by them. Due to less physical and financial progress in SCM projects, the smart city rankings of both the cities had reduced, from 1 to 48 and 45 to 65, respectively, for BSCL and RSCL, as of March 2022. The CAG attributed the poor performance to non-delegation of required ULB powers to the SPVs with respect to Smart Cities Mission (SCM) projects and failure to mobilise the required funds as was envisaged in the SCP. Non-adherence to the guidelines of MoHUA while entering into contracts for execution of the projects and disbursement of funds to the executing agencies and lack of monitoring mechanism as well as internal control were also blamed for the poor show.