Ludhiana Smart City Mission Delayed Due to Incomplete Projects, ET RealEstate
LUDHIANA: The last leg of the Smart City mission here is bound to take more time, since the June-end deadline is about to lapse but several projects such as the laying of important bridges over the Buddha Dariya and the Sidhwan Canal remain incomplete. The executing officials don’t expect to finish their tasks before October.
It has been nine long years since the Smart City mission was launched, and Ludhiana was among the first 20 cities selected for this central programme. During this time, the civic officials remained under the scanner because the city’s residents were dissatisfied with the quality of design and construction delivered under these projects.
The pending projects include three bridges across the Buddha Nullah — near Radha Swami Satsang Ghar on the Tibba Road, near Amrit Dharam Kanda, and near Chand cinema — along with laying road from Chand cinema to the MC limits and another along the Buddha Nullah from Kundanpuri to Upkar Nagar. Three bridges over the Sidhwan canal — one to cross over from Shimlapuri to Isher Nagar, another to cross from Dugri’s Urban Estate to Model Town, and yet another on the southern bypass near Simran Palace at Lohara village — are also unfinished.
The construction of another bridge across the Buddha Dariya at Shivpuri is incomplete like another bridge across the Buddha Dariya near Manna Singh Nagar along with the construction of road from Transport Nagar to Shingaar cinema house. For these projects, the assigned deadline was October, but the executing teams will overshoot it since many of these works haven’t crossed even the tendering stage.
However, projects such as UID number plates, bioremediation of the city’s legacy waste, construction of a basketball court at Guru Nanak Stadium, 24×7 surface water supply to the ABD area, and the procurement of hook loaders and compactors for 22 locations are near completion. But since their deadline will lapse in June-end, these will have to be extended, otherwise there’s more work than can be finished in just a few days. After looking at the amount of pending work, the sources who have followed these projects claimed to see chances that their deadlines might have to be extended even to the next year. The municipal corporation has secured the project money already for the jobs in its pipeline, so there should not worries at a later stage. Confronted about the unfinished work, municipal commissioner Sandeep Rishi defended his teams, saying: “We have completed many of the projects that were important for the city. The ones pending will be finished in the next few months, since the tendering process for the many of those projects is in progress. We are trying our best to complete the Smart City projects in the given time.”
