Doon’s exclusion from smart cities reflects Centre’s neglect: Cong

The exclusion of Dehradun in the Centre’s list of top 20 smart cities on Thursday drew sharp reaction from the Congress, which termed it as a decision reflecting the Centre’s “attitude of neglect” towards the state ruled by the party.

“The Centre displayed its attitude of neglect towards Uttarakhand by not giving a cabinet berth to any of the five MPs from here. It has displayed the same attitude once again by not naming any of the cities in the state in the first list of smart cities,” said Surendra Kumar, media advisor to Chief Minister Harish Rawat.

“This is unfortunate because Dehradun has not been included in the list despite fulfilling all criteria laid down by the Centre in this regard. The Narendra Modi government has treated us unfairly, and side-lined the Congress-ruled Uttarakhand. All five BJP MPs from this state should apologise to the people as they were unsuccessful in their attempt to convince the Central government in promoting Dehradun as an ideal city for the dream project. However, the state government will continue to work on its agenda to provide better civic amenities to people” Kumar added.

Anoop Nautiyal of the Aam Aadmi party (AAP) said the Congress government in Uttarakhand never tried to understand the concept of smart city, and sent a proposal of developing a smart city in the green belt area. 

Union Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu on Thursday announced the first list of 20 cities that will be developed to have basic infrastructure under the Smart City project. Bhubaneswar emerged on top among 20 cities, including Pune, Ahmedabad, Chennai and Bhopal, that have been selected as part of the first batch of the Smart City initiative, for which the New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) area in the national Capital has also made the grade.