Ahead of the second anniversary of the central government's Smart City Mission on June 25, the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) has approved a number of projects pending for some years now. Almost four years and several tenders later, the Smart Poles project was finally approved by the Council in its meeting held on Tuesday.
Installing Smart Poles enabled with CCTV surveillance, warm LED lights, WiFi and environment sensors in Lutyen's Delhi to replace existing street light poles was part of Smart City, a flagship project of the Prime Minister. The working of this project comes under the Union Ministry of Urban Development (MoUD).
In the meeting, the Council approved the installation of 55 smart poles. This is the first phase of the project.
"The Council has approved the project initially for installing 55 smart poles in areas including Pancharipuri, Teen Murti and Connaught Place, among others. However, the minutes are to be signed yet. We will now award work to the contractor," said a senior NDMC official.
In the fresh tender, the CCTVs to be installed will have night-vision mode as well as wider span. This is meant to boost security in the VIP enclave of the Capital, the official added.
Also, other projects including smart roads and parking too are expected to be approved before June 25.
The civic body had initially proposed installing 18,300 smart poles in the area. However, the project was tendered and re-tendered several times while one of the bidders had gone to court over the conditions of the tender, calling it 'vague'.
The project, estimated at a cost of around Rs 200 crores, was challenged by one of the bidders in the High Court last year. Later, a fresh request for proposal (RFP) was floated in July 2016. Tenders had been floated thrice for the project since it was proposed. With the kind of high-end technology required for the project and high costs, initially there were very few bidders.
The NDMC area is in the list of 20 cities to be developed as Smart Cities.
Earlier this year, Union Minister Venkaiah Naidu had asked the civic body to expedite projects for visible impact like smart roads, warm LED lights, smart poles etc while reviewing progress on the Smart City project.
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