NEW DELHI, December 4: The enthusiasm about Smart City Plans under preparation has resulted in huge citizen participation with over 15 lakh citizens from urban areas contributing to the same with their views and suggestions using ‘MyGov.in’.
15,01,417 citizens posted their comments, views and suggestions besides voting in response to various proposals of cities included in the Smart City Mission till November 30,2015. Various cities have solicited citizen participation in the preparation of Smart City Plans since September this year using MyGov.in platform. Citizen participation has been given a weightage of 16 percent in the evaluation of Smart City Plans in the second stage of ‘City Challenge Competition’.
Bhopal topped the list with 1,14,529 citizens responding to various aspects of the Smart City Plan for the city followed by Indore with 1,07,628, Allahabad -1,03,152, Haldia-75,763, Jhansi-61,048, Udaipur-60,129, Aligarh-49,484, Gwalior-47,164, Sharanpur-45,290 and Jabalpur-38,805, making the top 10 cities in respect of citizen participation.
Biharshariff (25732) in Bihar, Kakinada(22077) in Andhra Pradesh, Chandigarh(21252), Oulgaret(19427) in Puducherry, Tiruppur(19395) and Thoothukudi(18536), both in Tamil Nadu, Raipur(14472), Bilaspur(13679), Varanasi(11790) and Faridabad (11342) were among the top 20 mission cities that made good use of MyGov.in for citizen participation in preparation of Smart City Plans.
These are followed by Chandigarh, Rourkela, Solapur, Hyderabad, Agra, Gandhinagar, Moradabad, Chennai, Warangal, Namchi(Sikkim), Bareilly, Aizawl, Karnal, Durgapur, Kanpur, Surat and Nashik.
Officials handling ‘MyGov.in’ said that this scale of citizen response and participation in preparation of Smart City Plans is huge and unprecedented and is driven by the buzz created about development of smart cities. According to them, this has far exceeded the response to all other proposal. The issue of ‘Net Neutrality’ has received 72,000 responses on MyGov.in during one month between July 15-August 15, this year. Prime Minister’s weekly ‘Man Ki Baat’ on All India Radio receives about 60,000 responses.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi while launching Smart City Mission on June 25th this year has stressed the need for urban development plans to emanate from grass root level with the participation of citizens. Besides MyGov.in, smart cities are also promoting citizen participation through ward level and other group meetings.
All cities included in the Smart City Mission shall submit city level Smart City Plans to the Ministry of Urban Development by the 15th of this month for evaluation to pick up the first batch of cities to be provided with financial support during the current financial year. Other cities will be asked to make up for identified deficiencies before participating in the next rounds of competition.
Citizen response to Smart City Plans on MyGov.in far outstrips that of net neutrality and Man Ki Baat
