Delhi an unplanned city: Deputy CM Manish Sisodia

NEW DELHI: Terming the national capital as an " unplanned city", Deputy Chief Minister Manish Sisodia today sought innovative ideas from corporates to improve the standards of living in the city.

Addressing Assocham's national conference on "Innovation to make cities financially sustainable", Sisodia also said that education and health are the basic of any smart city.

"We are living in an unplanned city where there are several high-rise buildings having flats for at least Rs 20 lakh, but city planners, while developing it 20 years back, didn't think about newspaper vendors, washerman others where they would go.

"Due to their mistakes, we are today living in the unplanned city where we are alive, but living for the sake of it. We are trying to make it for living," he said.

According to the deputy CM, smart city should be such where a common man can also afford health and education expenditures in good hospitals and schools respectively, saying that until we get to see such confidence about our city, it can not be called a smart city.

"Health and Education are the basic of any smart city. In order to make our city a smart city, we will need three things - honest politics, best and visionary brains, courage. The people of Delhi have given a historic mandate to innovative ideas. We are open for best innovative ideas to make Delhi a smart city," he also said.

The Minister said that government would made teacher a pilot of education system and rest all including the education minister and other senior officials in the education department are the support staff.

"We are working towards promoting the role of a teacher as pilot of the education system and rest all including the Education Minister and other senior officials in the Education Department are the support staff. We need well-trained teachers in our schools," Sisodia said.

"We need to make education as the base for development of Delhi as presently education is imparted in a very unscientific manner, we are working towards changing that, it is a big challenge," he said.