Smart City Proposal for Varanasi (WB Funding)

Funding Agency: World Bank

Location: Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh

To participate in the Smart City Mission Challenge cities were required to Proposal for Smart Cities Challenge. To facilitate Cities / State Governments to prepare Proposal, MoUD had shortlisted consulting firms to assist States/ Union Territories through its World Bank assisted Capacity Building for Urban Development (CBUD) project in selection of the consulting firms which can help the States/ Cities to prepare Proposal. Under the assignment, consultant were expected to involve all city level stakeholders to give their views to make a financially viable project for admissible scheme components such as retrofitting, re-development and green field development.

Actual Services provided by the Firm

• Preparation of City-wide Concept Plan for existing infrastructure status. • The Smart City Proposal (SCP) consisted of Strategic Action Plans for Area Developments based on the three typologies: (a) area improvement (retrofitting) (b) city renewal (redevelopment) and (c) city extension (greenfield) and one City-wide (Pan-city) initiative that applies Smart Solutions to the physical, economic, social and institutional infrastructure. Application of Smart Solutions involving the use of technology, information and data to make infrastructure and services better and using smart technologies for the development of the poor and marginalized will be an important part of the Proposal. • Consultant organized more than 150 stakeholder discussions sessions to consult with more than 3,00,000 stakeholders • Identified an area of more than 1000 acre for retrofitting involving Rehabilitation of old sewer lines, new water supply lines for reduced non revenue water, provision of solar power for 10 MW power generation, underground cabling of electric lines for 65 km city area, face lifting of select roads, underground parking facilities for parking of 3000 vehicles, cycle tracks, intelligent traffic management system for entire city, app based GPS monitoring of public vehicles etc. Total cost of the project was Rs 949.70 Cr. • The Smart City Proposal included Financing and Investment plan for the complete life cycle of the Proposal. This financial plan identified internal (taxes, rents, licenses and user charges) and external (grants, assigned revenues, loans and borrowings) sources of mobilizing funds for capital investments and operation and maintenance over the life cycle of project. Financial and Investment plan provided for sources for repayment of project cost over a period of 8-10 years, O&M cost and also include resource improvement action plan for financial sustainability of ULB. • The Proposal development was people-driven, from the beginning, achieved through citizen consultation meetings. • Organized community participation and mobilization programmes to achieve the goals of Smart City Proposal. • Developed plan, approach and mechanism for community participation program. • Proposal was approved by the State level committee chaired by Chief Secretary of Uttar Pradesh State.