CHENNAI: Nearly a decade after the launch of the Smart Cities Mission, 52 of the 243 projects planned across Tamil Nadu’s 11 smart cities, involving Rs 1,602 crore, remain unimplemented, while 44 projects worth more than Rs 623 crore were taken up outside the original plans, the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) has found.
The audit, which covered Chennai, Coimbatore, Erode, Madurai, Salem, Tirunelveli and Tiruppur for the period from 2015-16 to 2022-23, found that five of the unplanned projects were routine municipal works that should ordinarily have been funded by the civic bodies, in violation of Smart Cities Mission guidelines.
Among the projects that failed to take off were Chennai’s Rs 248-crore street-light monitoring system and a Rs 120-crore drainage project in Coimbatore. The audit also found that multi-level parking facilities created in four cities were non-functional due to issues including the absence of lifts and delays in obtaining electricity connections.
The CAG further found that 70 projects involving expenditure of Rs 655.43 crore were executed outside the areas identified for focused development under the mission. While Smart City companies maintained that 26 projects were implemented entirely outside these areas, the audit found the actual number to be 34.
The report observed that the Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) set up to implement the mission largely functioned as funding agencies rather than independent entities responsible for planning and execution. Revenue intended to make the SPVs sustainable was retained by municipal corporations.
The CAG recommended appointing full-time CEOs, strengthening the finances of SPVs, formalising revenue-sharing arrangements with municipal corporations, and improving transparency in tendering.
