DRIVE anywhere in parts of Srinagar, especial the areas from the airport to Boulevard, roads are being dug up to redevelop the city. The work being undertaken as part of the Srinagar Smart City project has progressed despite facing challenging weather conditions through winter. There has been a race to meet the deadlines and the administration looks on course to do so. The work is in full swing across all proposed sites, including Residency Road, MA Road, Jhelum riverfront, and interconnections such as Polo View, Regal, Jehangir Chowk, and Chunthi Kul.
The overall budget for the project is Rs 3000 crore, with Rs 2000 crore allocated to line departments working in collaboration with Smart City Limited on various projects, while Smart City Limited has a budget of around Rs 1000 crore. The project includes several pan-city projects focused on IT-related interventions, enhancing urban mobility, improving certain roads, and upgrading public transport facilities throughout the city.
The Smart City scheme by the Indian government provides Rs 500 crore to a selected city over five years, with an equal amount contributed by the state or union territory within the same period. Srinagar has received funding of approximately Rs 1000 crore from both sources. The remaining projects worth Rs 2000 crore are being undertaken through convergence with line departments that would have carried out the works regardless.
This is transforming Srinagar on a scale never seen before. Changes like that of a large portion of the Jhelum embankment popularly called Bund, are only further enhancing its old-world charm. Bund, a mooring site of the first house boats in the Valley has been a darling of tourists. The ongoing smart city project is in many ways a search for the vintage old Srinagar when all was so serene.
Srinagar’s metamorphosis from a physically ravaged city in the nineties is also taking place across the swathe of its markets – some gutted remains of the buildings including the city’s oldest cinema hall like Palladium notwithstanding. Over the past four years, many trendy malls have come up together with the renovation and refurbishing of the run-down establishments, issuing forth a new vivacious city. Some term it a physical push towards normalcy. The administration is making every effort to draw the city out of its blood-soaked past and restoring it to its past glory. And it has been successful in ushering in this transformation. A peaceful and an aesthetically appealing Srinagar is drawing tourists in thousands which, in turn, is helping the local economy and bringing the lost jobs back. Slowly and steadily, a Naya Srinagar is surfacing and no one is complaining.
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