The TRS government has been totally neglecting the ‘Smart Cities’ project and despite the Central government allotting close to ₹500 crore as its share for taking up civic infrastructure in the cities of Warangal and Karimnagar, the State had failed to allot the matching grant sending the entire scheme into limbo, charged the TS BJP on Thursday.
“The Minister for Municipal Administration and Urban Development K.T. Rama Rao should either explain where these funds got diverted or should resign for failing to ensure these two cities civic infrastructure got developed. Warangal could have been spared of flooding if the storm water drain works were completed with these funds,” claimed official spokesman A. Rakesh Reddy at a press conference.
He claimed the TS government had spent just ₹32 crore — ₹23 crore for Warangal and ₹9 crore for Karimnagar — with no word on how the rest of the money was spent. “The government is supposed to have formed a special purpose vehicle and provided a matching grant to take up civic works but nothing of that sort had happened. Our efforts to ascertain where the funds were spent through the RTI was thwarted. We will now approach the courts to get to the root of the matter,” said Mr. Reddy.
The Centre too has communicated to the Chief Secretary about the delays in forming of the SPVs for the last one year and having eliciting no proper response it wanted to remove both the places from the ‘Smart Cities’ list but the senior party leaders had prevailed upon the Ministry of Urban Development not to do so, he claimed.
The BJP leader also questioned the silence of the elected TRS representative from both the places and said the promised Warangal-Hyderabad business corridor and the new IT hubs have not materialised.
