Tag: Smart City

Ranchi ‘Smart City’ locality with mud roads and no drains

Source: telegraphindia.com

Over 1,000 residents of Jagatpuram, a new settlement on a flank of Kanke Road (Ranchi-Patratu Road) less than 5km from the chief minister’s residence, are forced to live without concrete roads and drainage.

A seven-minute drive from the CM’s residence, Jagatpuram mocks the tall claims of the central and state governments of working towards making Ranchi a Smart City.

The locality, which grew virtually from farmland in the past four years owing to the capital’s rapid urbanisation, now has around 200 households. Some of these are opulently built.

But, the first heavy hours have bared the non-existent civic facilities in the area that falls under Ward 1 of Ranchi Municipal Corporation.

The locality has only one cemented road, 200 feet of it, in a part of the colony built with Ranchi Zilla Parishad funds. The mud roads turn slushy streams. The low-lying area is virtually marooned.

Ramanand Raman, who lives here and works at a private pathological laboratory, said he was already regretting having bought land here for his house. “I purchased land here six months ago, I’m already repenting my decision. It rains, and everyone is trapped at home, children can’t go to school, there’s no road to walk on,” Raman said.

Another resident Pramod Kumar said it was a relatively new settlement, not more than four years old.

“Many influential persons bought land here, you can see their palatial buildings. In another season, it may even look like a posh locality. But on the ground, and in monsoon specially, things are a mess because we don’t have proper roads and drainage. These are basics,” he said.

He added that as the bulk of the area was flooded or slushy, sanitation workers had stopped coming. “Imagine, we have to dump garbage here and there. Perfect conditions for mosquitoes to breed,” he added.

Contacted, Ranchi deputy mayor Sanjeev Vijayvargiya admitted to the problem at Jagatpuram. “RMC is aware of the road and drainage problems there and has prepared a detailed project report worth Rs 5 crore to address them. Work will be done in phases. In the first phase, a Rs 1.5 crore road will be built, for which the tender will be floated very soon,” he said.

Smart City, AIIMS, 500-bed Dumka hospital get environmental clearance

Source: hindustantimes.com

The Jharkhand government’s five big-ticket projects, including Smart City, AIIMS and 500-bed Dumka hospital, got the much-awaited environmental clearance (EC) from the State Level Environment Impact Assessment Authority (SEIAA), officials said on Wednesday.

SEIAA chairman SEH Kazmi said, the environmental clearance for five building construction projects -civic tower, convention centre, Rabindra Bhawan in Ranchi, AIIMS Deoghar and 500-bed hospital building in Dumka- was given in SEIAA’s 74th meeting held on Tuesday.

Construction work of multistorey civic tower and convention centre under Ranchi Smart City scheme were stopped for want of environmental clearance around three months back.

The Centre had picked Ranchi under its ambitious Smart City project in May 2016. Jharkhand is developing country’s first Greenfield smart city project on an area of 656 acres of land, acquired by the state government from Heavy Engineering Corporation (HEC) Limited.

Vice-president, Venkaiah Naidu on September 9 in 2017 laid the foundation stones of three major projects such as convention centre, urban civic tower (UCT) and Jharkhand urban planning management institute (JUPMI)-worth around Rs 700 crore. Barring JUPMI, two other projects were waiting for the required EC.

Chief executive officer (CEO) of Ranchi Smart City Corporation Limited (RSCCL), Amit Kumar said, “With getting clearance, mobilisation of building materials and labour force have been started from Wednesday. Now, the projects are expected to progress with its schedule.”

However, the project proposals were given clearance with certain conditions. “We have decided to grant environmental clearance to the project proposals with conditions recommended by the State Expert Appraisal Committee (SEAC) subject to if remaining plots of the projects are found to be ‘Jungle Jhari (forest bush)’ in future, the project proponent will have to abide by the provisions of Forest (Conservation) Act, 1980,” said SEIAA member secretary Kamlesh Pandey.

Meanwhile, the upcoming All India Institute of Medical Sciences (AIIMS), which is coming up at Devipur in Deoghar, was also granted the clearance. Foundation of the institute on 272 acres of land was laid in May last year. The construction work of the building is in progress.

Teachers’ recruitment process for AIIMS has already begun. A recruitment notice by AIIMS Patna was issued recently for appointment of eight professors, 11 additional professors, 13 associate professors and 30 assistant professors. If sources in the health department are to be believed, the session of the institute will begin from August this year with 50 seats of MBBS.

Similarly, SEIAA also granted environmental clearance to 500bed hospital coming up in Dumka district. Besides, the Rs 155-crore Rabindra Bhawan, proposed to be a cultural hub of Ranchi, also got the clearance for its speeding construction.