RAIPUR: Four years on, and the ambitious Rs 1,000 crore Raipur Smart City project has hardly reached one-fourth of its completion.With just two years to deadline, of proposed Rs 1,000 crore project, Rs 250 crore worth work has been completed by the Raipur Smart City Limited RSCL ) in the past four years.Due to lack of interest of bidders, the ambitious Rs 400 crore smart road project has been reduced to mere Rs 60 crore and will be rolled out in phases after exploring its possibilities. Out of the proposed 160 kilometre patch of smart road, the government issued tender of developing just 900 meters stretch near Maharajband Talab As per RSCL official, “Tendering for smart road have been issued nearly four times. We have failed to receive any potential bidder. The project can be executed by an experienced investor, who have large scale turnover with sufficient experience to execute multiple features of projects including beautification, underwire cabling, landscaping and Information technology features besides building the road.”The ambitious smart city mission of the government has failed to make remarkable progress in the earmarked areas of Malviya road, Jaistambh chowk, Kotwali road and major markets including Ganj Mandi, Naveen Market , Shastri market except Jawahar Market, where the project of multi-utility building is underway.Explaining the reason for delay, RSCL’s senior Engineer said ,“The development work has lagged behind in major markets because they are located in old city areas which are quite congested and remain abuzz till late night. RSCL is in terms of planning with police and other departments to rework on traffic mode to address the limited space. There is a provision to request centre for changing the earmarked areas but the timeline has been closed now.”However, the RSCL officials assured of execution and completion of work as they have to meet deadline of 2022.However, 27.5% of the proposed projects are completed in past four years. In January 2018, Raipur bagged a third spot for ‘project grounding’– issuing maximum number of tenders under smart city project.Among implemented projects, the dedicated cycle track at MG road failed to click with the residents and being used by cart vendors and parking vehicles.RSCL officials alleged corruption as one of the reasons the public utility projects have failed to shape up.The Integrated Traffic Management System (ITMS)’s censor based signals which has replaced the countdown timers at several traffic signals are also not working accurately.In 2016, nearly 13 proposed smart city projects including thematic market, dual layer street for pedestrian among others were cancelled.No complaint for shortage of funds was made by the RSCL but they attribute the delay due to elections in past year which continued till February and lack of interest of bidders.Also, fearing displacement due to development of a complex under smart city project, the businessmen of Ganjmandi market have filed petition against the RSCL in high court. On this RSCL engineer said, “Ganjmandi is a business hub sprawled in 65 acres and a project worth of Rs 50 crore has been stooped and now the court has directed RSCL to first sought permission and then execute the development work in Ganjmandi.”The officials say that the building in Ganjmandi is being developed to accommodate vendors.Talking to TOI, RSCL Managing Director Saurabh Kumar said, “ RSCL have the authority of changing the projects as per the need of the hour. The bottlenecks are being worked out in collaboration with other departments and work will be executed effectively. Projects worth Rs 250 crore have been included and tendering for around Rs 150 crore have been done as of now.”