Delhi’s Connaught Place Smart City project sees no bidders

The smart city projects, including the plan for turning??Connaught Place??market into a smart high-end shopping street, are in a limbo.??New Delhi Municipal Council??(NDMC) is not able to find any bidders for the projects despite floating tenders several times.

According to a council report, tenders of many projects have not been floated while for others, tenders are being floated repeatedly. The council had planned to introduce smart parking management system to decongest the Connaught Place and erect LED smart poles with Wi-Fi facility . The tender for 55 smart poles in the area has been floated thrice in vain.

NDMC secretary Chanchal Yadav said that the council had to float tenders again, as no bidder seemed interested. “The work on these policies is over and we are hoping to confirm these tenders by January end,” said Yadav. He pointed out that the projects proposed by the council requires high end technology and involve higher cost. “Floating the tenders again is taking time,” he said.

The council had announced that by November 2016, the smart parking management system will be ready but even after a month, nothing has happened. NDMC had also planned to launch a sensor-based parking management system through which one can book their parking slot from mobile application NDMC 311.

The traders association of Connaught Place market claimed that when the council had proposed these projects, they consulted the association but since then they haven’t heard anything from their end.

Source : mbnow