Saturday, September 22, 2012

Top Bureaucrats Presents Rosy Picture to Hooda on Urban Development

Chandigarh (I-Haryana News): A group of high ranked bureaucrats indulged in urban development in Haryana on Friday painted rosy picture of state’s cities and towns in front of Chief Minister, Mr. Bhupinder Singh Hooda in meeting held in Chandigarh.

In this meeting Mr. Hooda was informed that Ministry of Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation (HUPA) had approved to cover three towns of the State namely Faridabad, Gurgoan and Panipat under the scheme. HUPA had also approved Rs. 16.86 crore for Slum Free City Planning for these towns.

It was also informed that the respective Municipal Commissioners had been directed to conduct Bio Metric, GIS Mapping and Socio-economic surveys in these towns so that a Detailed Project Report should be sent to Government of India.

The Chief Minister was apprised that under the Urban Infrastructure Development Scheme of Small and Medium Towns (UIDSSMT), an 18 MLD capacity Sewage Treatment Plant (STP) at Bahadurgarh had been set up and made functional.

Apart from this, the work on 10 MLD capacity STP at Ambala Sadar, Sewerage project at Ambala Sadar, 36 MLD capacity STP at Bahadurgarh, 5 MLD capacity STP at Charkhi Dadri, 6 MLD capacity STP at Narnaul, Solid Waste Management (SWM) at Rohtak, SWM at Yamunanagar and Jagadhari and SWM at Karnal and Indri were in progress.

 It was informed that Sonepat had been selected under Urban Infrastructure Development Scheme in Satellite towns for two projects namely Municipal Solid Waste Management Scheme and Augmentation of water supply for Sonipat through rainy wells.

With the augmentation of the water supply project in Sonepat, there would be no problem of drinking water in the times to come.

Mr. Hooda was apprised that for the convenience of general public, the Municipal Corporation, Gurgaon had introduced E-delivery of various citizen services. He was informed that these services would be introduced in all the Municipal Corporations within next six months, the process of which was already going on.

The State had a total of 76 Urban Local Bodies including nine Municipal Corporations, 14 Municipal Councils and 53 Municipal Committees. The budget outlay of the department for the year 2012-13 had been fixed at Rs. 1654.20 crore.  

Chief Parliamentary Secretary Mrs. Sharda Rathore, Principal Secretary  to Chief Minister Mr. Chattar Singh, Chief Secretary Mr. P.K.  Chaudhery, Additional Principal Secretary Dr. K.K. Khandelwal, Principal OSD Mr. M.S Chopra, Principal Secretary, Urban Local Bodies department Mr. Ram Niwas and several other senior officers were also present in the meeting.
IHN Investigates:
As per the Planning Commission of India, the state has spent Rs 297.5 crores in 2007-08, Rs 423.9 crores in 2008-09, Rs 1,318.0 crores in 2009-10 and Rs 785.7 crores in 2010-11 thus Haryana invested total of Rs 2825.2 crores in 11th five years plan, which was 2.1 percent of its total spending during the corresponding periods.

A study conducted by the 13th Finance Commission reveals the poor state of finances of the municipal bodies of the country. On a per capita basis, the total revenue of municipal bodies was a meager Rs. 733 in 2002-03 and it went up to Rs 1430 in 2007-08, whereas Haryana remained at Rs 830 per captia in this category whereas esteemly low as compare to Maharashtra’s Rs 3417 and Rs 2667 of Chhattisgarh, this is also not satisfactory for the state which claims itself as number one state of India.

The own revenue of Municipalities (0.50 per cent of GDP) are a little over half of their total revenue (0.94 per cent of GDP).

Further, as per Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission progress report published by the Ministry of Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation as on June 30, 2012 Haryana lone city under JNNURM, Faridabad could able to achieve 20-25 percent of indictors mentioned in mission , again contrary to what senior officers shared with Mr. Hooda today.

On Sewage Treatment Plant issue ,none of sewage treatment plants is running properly in state, we can see open municipal wastes in outskates of all of cities and towns and sewage system in state urban areas are still depended on past practices which we are following centuries.

The IHN requests Haryana Chief Minister, Mr. Hooda to personally verify the physical process and implementation of high claims projected by the concerned bureaucrats to shield their incompetency to envision the urban development planning suited to the state like Haryana which due to its proximity with National capital has to share extra burden, and its cities and towns should be planned keeping in view of the extra scope.

Dinesh Singh Rawat says:

The future planning in Indian bureaucracy is rare thing to find, most of them are working on contingency planning as suits to their political masters of the time and changes as their masters chnage.

Under such circumstances the way all top officers in Haryana tried to convey Mr. Hooda a rosy picture about urban planning which Chief Minister could see as bureaucrats in question always bend as per wishes their political masters  included Mr Hooda to fulfill the politico- personal interests by ignoring the basic of urban development planning.

I am of view the urban should be devise by technical experts on the issue not by officers and Political heads should try to put extra.a time on future planning so that state could Heep the benefits of its proximity to Delhi throne
    

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