Shendra smart city set to get finance secy nod
HEADWAY Smart city to come up near Aurangabad on Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor; `1.5K-cr tendering soon
NEW DELHI: Shendra Bidkin, the smart city that found mention in the Union Budget speech, is likely to get the finance ministry’s nod on Thursday to initiate tenders to the tune of `1,500 crore towards infrastructure and development.
The smart city is set to come up in Aurangabad as part of the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC).
Once the finance secretary Rajiv Mehrishi-headed DMIC Trust approves tenders for design, construction, roads, landscaping and district administration buildings, the city would be launched by the DMIC Development Corporation (DMICDC), following the pattern set by Dholera smart city in Gujarat, said an official.
This would be the third city for which DMICDC will moot proposals to begin tendering — the first being the Integrated Industrial Township Vikram Udyogpuri in Ujjain, Madhya Pradesh, followed by the Activation Area of Dholera Special Investment Region.
According to the official, this will be followed up with the tendering for an Integrated Industrial Township in Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, and Global City in Gurgaon, Haryana.
Talleen Kumar, CEO and managing director, DMICDC, confirmed the development and said, “The planning of smart cities under the DMIC project is already complete. Now we will roll out tenders for designbuild packages for four smart cities, shortly followed by tender roll out for the Global City in Gurgaon, later this year.”
The official said the government would invite EPC (engineering, procurement and construction) tenders worth about `300 crore for the Ujjain smart city, `2,500 crore for Dholera, `1,500 crore for Shendra and `450 crore for Greater Noida.
DMICDC will invite international competitive bidding for developing trunk infrastructure, including roads and utilities, sewage treatment and collection, water treatment, as well as potable and industrial water supply among others.
The Centre will provide funds through the DMIC Trust, which has a corpus of `17,500 crore to be utilised over a period of five years.
Cities such as Dholera and Shendra Bidkin will be carved out with an overall investment of $12 billion to $15 billion (`75,000 crore-`94,000 crore), which will be a mix of government and private investments, to be leveraged from the DMIC Trust’s trunk infrastructure investment pool.
“These cities hold a huge potential of having upsides as a result of initial investments into trunk infrastructure, which will again be ploughed back to fund other trunk infrastructure projects under the corridor development plan,” the official said.