MoHUA Secy visits Smart City project sites, BOC

Bhubaneswar: Secretary Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) Durga Shankar Mishra and Additional Secretary and Mission Director AMRUT Shiv Das Meena visited the various on-going projects across the city under Smart City Mission and also reviewed the works at the office of Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited (BSCL). They also visited the Bhubaneswar Operations Centre (BOC), the command and control centre for the city.

The Union Secretary of MoHUA also visited the housing project at Rangamatia and paid his respect to Lord Lingaraj, the presiding deity of Ekamra Kshetra, the ancient region which was later named as Bhubaneswar.

The senior bureaucrat from the Centre reviewed the flagship missions of MoHUA, and visited the BOC developed under the Smart City Mission. The overall presentation of the Smart City Projects was made by Dr. Krishan Kumar, Vice-Chairman BDA and MD BSCL. Overall presentation of AMRUT projects was done by PK Jha, Special Secretary to the State Government and State Mission Director of Smart Cities and AMRUT.

Presentation on bulk water supply public private partnership (PPP) project for IIT Bhubaneswar and NISER was done by Engineer-in-Chief Public Health Engineering Organisation S. Laxmipati.

After the presentation the Union Secretary of MoHUA paid a visit to Smart Park, Saheed Nagar, Social Equity Centre at Kharvel Nagar, Smart Janpath project and septage treatment plant at Basuaghai.

Senior officials i.e. CEO of BSCL Vineel Krishna, Additional Commissioner Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation Subham Saxena and Member Secretary Odisha Water Supply and Sewerage Board MR Das were present. Earlier on the day, Mishra also attended a national workshop on faecal sludge and septage management in the city.

SMART PARK

Design of the parks included, re-development of existing infrastructure like pathways, Drinking water taps, Children play equipment’s, Splash pool, Watch tower, Open GYM, Portable e-toilets, organizing shrubs/tress in a disciplined manner and planting new trees to suit the overall theme, adding child friendly components, ensuring adherence to the universal access guidelines, safety to the users with clean environment.

The Re-development of parks having various benefits to the citizen like pathway for public walking, Play Equipment’s for Children’s, Open Gyms for Citizens, Screen wall for graphic presentation for youths, yoga areas for all citizens, splash pool available to spend some quality time during evening and Watch Tower to visualize the surrounding beauty of parks.

SMART JANPATH

The redevelopment of Janpath Road includes streetscape design, beautification, landscaping, intersection redesign, and infrastructure upgrades with construction of new pavement, rehabilitation of existing pavement, construction and/or rehabilitation of major and minor bridges, culverts, road intersections, interchanges, drains, etc.

Janpath Road envisaged as the People’s smart Path. It has dedicated corridor for pedestrians, cyclists, underground utilities, etc. The entire stretch shall have active public plazas, proper crossings on the junctions, street furniture, dedicated vending zones.

SOCIAL EQUITY CENTRE

Social Equity Centre as a concept is envisaged to provide shelter to the poor floating population requiring temporary accommodation particularly targeting migrated construction workers.

The building in Kharvel Nagar has been designed as per the guidelines prescribed by the Odisha Urban Housing Mission (OUHM), and Housing and Urban Development Department, Govt of Odisha.

This integrated project will house a rental housing of 200 beds along with 100 beds for Urban Homeless, an Aahar Centre for subsidized food, Water ATM and other required amenities. The building design is guided by principle of social interaction, visual connectivity, public access, safety and security to make the building occupants comfortable and socially connected to each other.