SMC : Smart City With Not So Smart Heads!

Shimla, Mar. 27, Himachal Tonite Bureau  – The Queen of Hills has recently started losing its charm and is being converted into a concrete jungle. Majority of tourists now have started to avoid the city, which is causing a major decrease in the hoteliers’ income.

One such not so ‘SMART’ move made by the current authorities is the new parking structure coming up near Kalibari Temple which was approved by the Urban Development Minister, who invariably also heads the SMART City project. The sad state of affairs is that after spending a huge amount, the now incomplete structure has become an eyesore and the work has been stopped due to non-availability of NOCs from various departments, these being the local councillor, electricity department, and the municipal corporation. It just so seems that no one wants to take the responsibility as to why and who cleared the site for building a parking lot.

Shimla City Mayor Satya Kaundal feels that her main focus is her ward from where she has been elected as Councilor, contrary to the fact that she is the Mayor and that the whole City is her domain. As per her, rest of the responsibility of developments in other Wards is of the respective councilor, she is just there to help them get approvals. That is the level of understanding our Mayor has!

Interestingly, the Ward Councilor Sanjeev Thakur stated that he never even approved or approached the aforesaid structure considering that it was being built in the core area. And that the area is quite unstable as landslides are a frequent feature during the monsoons. The instability of that hill has been reason enough that even after decades the area hasn’t been developed or the fact that the stairs towards Fingask are always run down.

Sanjay Chauhan, Former Mayor, termed the entire structure as illegal stating that there are a number of restrictions imposed while any kind of construction is taken place in core areas. He demanded a proper enquiry as per why such a structure was made and who gave them that permission in the first place?

On the other hand, Gaurav Sharma, Spokesperson AAP said, “The current governing bodies are totally visionless and they have no idea what they are doing. They have just adopted a system of favouring a select few. In doing so, the government blatantly ignores all norms and with the current situation, very few or rather none are willing to question them.

The imperative question that needs to be asked is that even while passing any construction plans the City’s Architectural Planning Branch scrutinises each and every aspect of the layout, then how come they turned a blibd eye to this particular structure. The water pipelines below and the high tension electricity wires and poles were not even considered during the “legit” approval and lastly who bears the cost of this construction.

Citizens time to wake up and seek justice for each tax-payer penny spent by the Shimla Municipal Corporation!