Bengaluru: As the IT City gears up for the BBMP polls, a war of words has broken out between the BJP and Congress over Bengaluru not making it to the Smart City list. Union urban development minister M. Venkaiah Naidu on Tuesday alleged that Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had lost control over governance and was not getting involved in the decision making process.
In a statement, Mr Naidu said: “Mr Siddaramaiah should explain to people why the state government did not forward the name of Bengaluru for inclusion in the Smart City list. From the irresponsible comments of the CM, it is clear that he has not bothered to keep himself informed about what was happening regarding Smart City selection during the month-long evaluation exercise.”
Mr Naidu added, “His irresponsible comments in the matter blaming me and other Union ministers from Karnataka for non-inclusion of Bengaluru in the list has exposed him and the Congress party.” He added that Mr Siddaramaiah might still be caught in the old Congress mindset assuming the Centre would approve projects as they like in a subjective manner. “He should realise that under PM Modi, those days are gone,” he quipped.
The Union minister contended that he never wanted to make it an election issue. "But now that Mr Siddaramaiah for short-sighted political reasons, has made baseless charges and dragged my name in, I would like to make it clear that the state government did not even suggest Bengaluru for the Smart City category," Mr Naidu said.
The selection of Smart City aspirants was based on a two-stage process. "In the first stage, all urban local bodies in the state were evaluated as per a set of parameters like service levels, institutional and financial capacity, e-governance etc. The Smart City slots to each state are assigned based on urban population and the number of statutory urban local bodies. This objective criteria has been evolved after extensive consultations with states and UTs. In fact, this is the first time that such an objective criteria, leaving no space for any discretionary choice by the central government is being adopted,” he said explaining the rationale behind how cities were selected.
