Shimla Municipal Corporation quashes the media reports of Dharamshala being again chosen for the Smart City project.
Sanjay Chauhan, Mayor and Tikender Singh Panwar, Deputy Mayor Shimla MC claimed that in a smart city meeting held yesterday, Dharamshala Municipal town and ACS UD have failed to produce any document against the parameters defined in score card.
Chauhan claimed that qualification for Dharamshala has only come after evaluation by Mission Director and her staff. The minutes of HPSC have still not been confirmed and several objection are being placed by the Mayor Shimla (copy of objections raised). Mayor also accused UD for working in partism mind set.
Shimla MC has claimed serious irregularities and questions the score sheet in percentile instead of points. Chauhan said
“According to the Departments evaluation excel with all their concoctions, Shimla score 77 points (though the actual figure is 85) and Dharamshala scores 72.5 (Actual score is 32.5). However, with their own imaginative formula Shimla gets score out of 100 and were as Dharamshala gets score out of 80, which leads to a percentile of 77.5 and 90% for Shimla and Dharamshala respectively. This is utterly ridiculous; firstly this was never brought to the discussion prior to the evaluation and completely contradicts to the guidelines of evaluation format under stage 1. Even if there ridiculous formula is to be accepted, but the actual data and not fudged data (32.5) is to be considered then they score 40.6%, which is nearly half which Shimla scores”
Shimla MC Mayor pointed out that Dharamshala city has not done any single reform as per urban infrastructure Development Scheme for Small & Medium Towns (UIDSSMT) reforms, then how come Dharamshala assigned 10 marks against this earlier.
Mayor also raised question over the claims of contribution of internal revenue sources (self-generated) used for capital works. Mayor pointed out
“how can Dharamshala MC spend more than 20% of their own revenue on capital works when there revenue is equal to their salaries. Total salary of Dharamshala MC per month is Rs 22.60 lakhs as per the given figures, and total revenue of MC Dharamshala is Rs. 2.74 crore. This means that entire revenue gets exhausted for disbursement of salary of Rs 2.71 crore”
Shimla MC has also questioned the intension of Dharamshala Municipality and ACS UD for not submitting supporting documents of Dharamshala town against the parameters defined in score card, which showed that the marks, and accused ACS UD for solely promoting Dharamshala city in biased manner.
The CPM ruled Shimla MC has requested the Committee for fair evaluation and also threaten to take legal course if merits were again ignored.
