Haryana to develop Gurgaon as Smart City

NEW DELHI: Haryana government today said the state will develop Gurgaon as Smart City with its own resources following centeral guidelines and technical assistance.

"As per the Centre's Smart City scheme, Rs 100 cr is given in a year for five years for developing a Smart City. So we will arrange that Rs 500 cr of our own for Gurgaon. Even though we do not get central fund, we are ready to do it of our own," Haryana Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar said here at a function here.

As per the NDA government's Smart City Mission, the Centre has announced a list of 98 cities and towns selected for development as Smart Cities.

These cities and towns were nominated by respective States and Union Territories at the end of first stage of City Challenge competition in which all the urban local bodies in each State and UT were evaluated based on their financial and institutional capacities and past track record.

As per the procedure, Karnal and Faridabad were selected to be developed as Smart City in Haryana.

However, the state seems to be keen to develop the NCR town Gurgaon also as a Smart City by raising the required fund itself.

Khattar said "all central guidelines for the Smart City will be followed by the state including technical assistance to develop Gurgaon as Smart City."

Haryana CM further said "now there will be total three Smart Cities including those two announced by the Centre."

Khattar further said the state is focusing on e-governance to bring transparency and eliminating corruption.

"All datas, including land record, pension, birth certificate everything is being digitised now," he said adding "birth certificate will be now linked to Aadhar and a child will be an automatically a voter after attaining the voting age."

He said the state is going to introduce biometric attendance system in schools.

"It will be applicable both for students and teachers and it will curb corruption," Khattar said.

He also said there will be about 2,500 service centres in villages across the state to help villagers.

Pointing out that power and education sector remain a challenge for the state, Khattar said, "the last government did not do anything to strengthen the power infrastructure and because of that we are facing problems now. Everybody has to pay now for power consumption."