PANAJI
About a month ago, the State government announced an abrupt change in the hierarchy at the Imagine Panaji Smart City Development Limited (IPSCDL), replacing its Managing Director and CEO, Mamu Hage, IAS, with ‘local boy’ Sanjit Rodrigues, IAS.
The reason? Clearly the chorus of dissent against the chaotic execution of three major ‘smart city’ projects had reached a crescendo and needed to be stemmed. In fact, even Revenue Minister, Atanasio (Babush) Monserrate, who represents the capital and was one of the staunchest votaries for the work to begin in October-November last year, had turned a dissenter in less than six months.
The June 8 notification making the change and appointing Rodrigues as MD and CEO was the twelfth time the State government had tweaked the BoD of the IPSCDL since the special purpose vehicle was first incorporated on June 9, 2016.
For now, the bureaucrat who took charge in the last week of May and has a ‘super hero’ reputation of sorts, may have solved the jigsaw puzzle that Panaji’s infrastructure was reduced to by the chaotic execution of the works. Some sense of order has indeed returned to the intracity traffic mayhem.
But once the monsoon is over, the threat of the chaos returning on the capital’s streets is real as most if not all of the roads restored are likely to be excavated again to allow the contractors complete the unfinished work.
And, the government’s strategy to halt the projects without completion and hurriedly restore the city’s road network with fresh hot-mixed carpets implemented by Rodrigues, is unlikely to end the ever growing list of questions surrounding the Rs 1,000-crore plus which are being pumped into super-imposing an alien concept of urban planning to make Panaji a smart city.
Since its incorporation back in 2016, the IPSCDL has been plagued with allegations of financial malfeasance and corporate governance bloomers. Lavish splurges on events in the garb of ‘public consultations’, exhorbitant salaries paid to employees and crores of rupees spent in fees to ‘consultants’ are only some of the examples of murky transactions red-flagged on record by none less than the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG). Worse, the IPSCDL has not audited its accounts for seven years in a row.
But more than the shady financial dealings of the IPSCDL, it is the execution of the projects over the last 6-7 months which threw life in the capital city in complete disarray that earned the government the ire of Panaji’s citizenry.
Back in 2014-15, when ‘Modi 1.0’ unveiled the 100 Smart Cities plan and included Panaji in the list, it drew loud cheers. More than eight years later and over Rs 1000 crore pumped in, the cheering has gone dead silent and ‘Panaji smart city’ still remains a dream to be imagined.
