LMC seeks more time to prepare smart city draft

LUCKNOW: The draft of the smart city proposal has been delayed by another three days as the Lucknow Municipal Corporation (LMC) has sought a few more days to ready the plan.

LMC officials informed that while the draft was to be submitted to the state government by December 7, the corporation would upload it on the portal by December 3, so that citizens could take a look at the proposal and suitable changes could be made before the final submission. Earlier, district magistrate Raj Shekhar had held a meeting in which he had expressed displeasure over the unprofessional manner in which the project was handled by LMC, particularly how the corporation failed to propagate the importance of public connect while preparing the draft, which had initially reflected in low vote count.

Reportedly LMC officials had admitted their error and had attributed it to the fact that they weren’t aware of the significance of public opinion in preparing the plan.

However the officials are upbeat regarding the final draft. On Monday, additional municipal commissioner, PK Srivastava said, “The voting is not going to affect our chances of qualifying for the next round as our draft is very good. We are going to take three additional days because we have decided to increase the area of retrofitting from Shivaji Marg to Qaiserbagh Bus. Balrampur, Residency, Globe Park, Bhatkhande, Cantt Road are now part of retrofitting.”

Public voting on the smart city proposal closed on Monday. Efforts of district administration and LMC to motivate students and young professionals to participate in the online voting showed results towards the end, with the voting and suggestions crossing the 10,000 mark.

Officials were out even on Monday afternoon to motivate students to vote and make suggestions.

However the final vote count suffered as the smart city portal slowed down considerably on the last day due to heavy traffic of votes from across the country.

Based on the detailed plan prepared by 100 local bodies, only 20 local bodies would be selected for the second round of the smart city project.