Ten years after it was launched, the central Smart City Mission is scheduled to officially end on March, 31, 2025. Meanwhile, three extensions have been given by the Central Government. Launched in 2015, the aim of the Mission was to create 100 Smart Cities. The cities were to be selected on a competitive basis. Panjim was one among the selected 100 Smart Cities.
The Smart Cities were selected between 2016 and 2018 and given a deadline of five years to complete their works. Since the works were not completed, the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs gave an extension in 2021 so that the works could be completed by 2023. The deadline for completion was further pushed to June 30, 2024. In its latest edition, the deadline has been further amended to March 31, 2025.
Due to the failure of the States to complete the projects, a 2024 report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Housing and Urban Affairs had proposed that State government would have to complete the incomplete projects at their own cost. Will the Centre stand by this?
Panjim is one of those cities which may default on completion of all projects before March 31, 2025. So, going by the Centre’s decision, will the State government have to complete the projects at their own expense? Or will the Centre relent and allow the States to utilise the Rs 48,000 crores
which is pending with the Centre by way of
approvals?
Panjim is struggling to complete its road works and sanitation projects. It still has to complete the sanitation and hygiene projects, Smart mobility (only electric buses have been introduced) and smart governance projects, forget about the Integrated Command and Control Centres, which are at the heart of the Smart City for intelligent monitoring of crime, accidents, parking, failure of services etc.
With just two days to go, the Smart City Mission has submitted that only road works would be completed before the March 31,2025 deadline. All the other infrastructure works such as gutters, footpaths, beautification, etc. would be done by May 31, 2025. There are no deadlines set for sanitation and hygiene projects, smart mobility, smart governance projects and the Integrated Command and Control Centre.
Even with two days to go, the contractor/s have not shown any urgency and the work is sluggish, chaotic, disorganised and lack supervision, as pointed out earlier. Over the last two weeks, O Heraldo has been marking the countdown to March 31, and completion of the Smart City works. We must say that the Smart City Mission has been responsive to O Heraldo’s campaign and filled up the dug up roads at least with mud, after the photographs have appeared in various editions over the last two weeks.
However, the road works, wherever they have been completed have been done with poor quality tar and the drains have not been completed. In these dire circumstances, one activist had made a tongue in cheek remark that along with electric buses, the Smart City must also purchase boats to save the citizens from the impending flooding in Panjim, with all the mud lying around.
As on date at least seven roads in the city are incomplete though motorable. From South of Panjim to North, they are the Taleigao-St Inez junction, which is dangerous and incomplete; the 18th June Road has been dug opposite Goa College of Pharmacy at two locations; the Mahatma Gandhi road near Don Bosco where the trench has been filled but a huge mountain of mud poses threat to commuters; the CCP Market to Geeta Bakery road which is in bad shape; the road between Mascarenhas building and Haroon island, near Delhi Durbar; and the road near Hotel Vinanti, near the Customs
Museum.
All the roads are motorable but have been patched up with mud and are treacherous and not fully tarred to represent a Smart City. The only road which is completely closed for traffic is the cross road from Real Barberia to Café Ritz and from Café Bhosle to Mascarenhas building. Here the work of concretisation of the road is going on and will certainly not meet the March 31, deadline.
After this huge spending of public money by raising taxes and crushing inflation, is Panjim looking smarter? This will be a question which the voters of Panjim will have to answer in the Goa Assembly Election 2027.