Centre’s plan a mere announcement: Sena

MUMBAI: The Shiv Sena on Monday took a jibe at the Centre over its Smart Cities Mission and said if smart cities like Mumbai and Pune are created in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar, the population density of the cities in Maharashtra would come down. An editorial in the party’s mouthpiece Saamana said the Narendra Modi-led Central government’s Smart Cities Mission has merely remained an “announcement” after it was launched in 2015.

Referring to Union minister Nitin Gadkari’s statement last month that there was a need to decongest Mumbai, the editorial said that Sena founder Bal Thackeray had cautioned about the rising population in Mumbai and Pune first. It said the Sena patriarch had sought ‘permit’ system in Mumbai, which had kicked up a storm in the Lok Sabha in then prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee’s government, and added Thackeray withdrew the demand on the request of BJP leaders to save the Vajpayee government.

“Because of Gadkari, this issue has come to the fore now… Gadkari is of the opinion that smart cities like Mumbai should be created in other places. The suggestion is good, but the Modi government has already made an announcement to make 100 smart cities. Of those 100, how many have materialised? Smart Cities Mission was announced on June 25, 2015; today in 2020, only 15% of the work has happened. The programme was good, but it remained an announcement,” the editorial read.