BHUBANESWAR: With the State Capital lagging behind others in the Smart City challenge, BJP mayoral candidate Suniti Mund said her priority, if elected in the ensuing urban polls, will be to make Bhubaneswar the cleanest city and one of the top five cities in the country in the next five years.
“I wish to make Bhubaneswar one among the top five cities of the country by working with Bhubaneswar MP Aparajita Sarangi,” said Mund, who is making her political debut with the Mayor elections.
Her vision is to make Bhubaneswar a city where every person feels secure, slums are a part of the city’s mainstream and no locality faces the twin problems of drainage and waterlogging.
She will also prioritise housing for all, piped water supply to each household and livelihood security to women in slums, besides, development of parks and recreation centres for senior citizens. Mund’s focus is also on developing vending zones for street vendors which was the brainchild of Sarangi when she was the BMC Commissioner.
Above all, Mund said, she will streamline the waste management and garbage dumping system and transform the Odisha Capital into the cleanest city of the country.
“Bhubaneswar had been ranked 5th as far as cleanliness is concerned when Aparajita Sarangi was the Municipal Commissioner. However, the State Capital is lagging far behind in the Swachhata ranking with 145th position now,” said Mund who wants to reintroduce ‘citizen’s charter’ for the people and strengthen the grievance redressal mechanism of BMC.
She said the saffron party will give a strong fight to BJD. “Voters are unhappy with the ruling BJD in urban areas. Slum dwellers are treated as second class citizens with no strategy for their mainstreaming, while there is a lot of discontentment among people due to lack of drainage system and deteriorating law and order,” she said.