Kolkata is not part of smart cities, announces Nitin Gadkari

It’s been only a year when the Union Road, Transport and Shipping Minister Mr. Nitin Gadkari had announced that “Each port will construct one smart city. We are trying to do this. Each city will be built with an expenditure of about Rs.3, 000-4,000 crore. These will be green smart cities.”

Over a year, on Wednesday, Gadkari declared a complete opposite to his previous declaration about smart port cities- at an event organized by Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India (Assocham), Kolkata. Gadkari said that the Government had dropped its plans for Kolkata and Mumbai while all the other major ports across the country will continue with the process of making smart cities.

The 12 major ports – Kandla, Mumbai, Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust, Mormugao, Visakhapatnam, Cochin, Chennai, New Mangalore, Ennore, V.O. Chidambaranar, Paradip and Kolkata – have around 264,000 acres of land around them. These major ports handle around 61 per cent of the cargo traffic. The government has planned to build wider roads, advanced townships and special economic zones along with ship-building and ship-breaking centers as a part of smart port cities.

On a better side, reports say that the ambitious plan of Nitin Gadkari is to develop a smart city around major ports is likely to start with Kandla port, where a smart city will come up in a few years time. The Terms of Reference (TOR) or project charter are currently under preparation for the project, covering Kandla and Gandhidham areas. “There are a lot of technicalities involved since most of these ports are about 50 years old. The prerequisites of due diligence, hiring consultants, mapping areas etc need be completed before we can tangibly proceed on this project. It would take another couple of years before the plans are firmly in place,” said a senior ministry official involved in the project.