Shimla, August 24, 2015: Urban Development Minister Shri Sudhir Sharma today said the Rajiv Gandhi Illuminating Scheme for Hill Town Advancement (RISHTA) recently launched by the state government would go a long way in making the provision for the whole range of integrated smart services for the overall improvement of urban governance and providing smart services to the urban population of the state.
He said this was an integrated project to create smart corridor for services like Wi-Fi, smart security surveillance, public announcement and address system and smart street lighting in all the Urban Local Bodies (ULBs). Thus, RISHTA project include several smart components and not only changing of LED fixtures or street lighting.
The Minister said this scheme was purely a state initiative that goes far beyond the Government of India advocacy of mere changing the street light fixtures with LED bulbs/fixtures. He made it clear that this was not funded by Government of India but the municipalities of the state had to pay for it out of the savings achieved through energy savings.
He said he never believed the necessity to take credit for the developmental projects been undertaken to facilitate the citizens of the state though few governments of the state had been doing this.
He said the State government was just utilising the services of Energy Efficiency Services Limited (EESL) which was a Public Sector Undertaking and was a business entity that run its business for profit and would recover the cost of its work along-with interest and profit from the urban local bodies during the contract period of seven years.
“If the state Government is making some innovation to ensure better service delivery to the people of the state and introducing smart features in governance, it has the prerogative to name the initiative as it wants and there is no harm in utilising the services of any GOI public sector undertaking which works for profit, for implementation”, said the Minister.
He said even the street lighting component of RISHTA scheme of the state Government would be in PPP mode which includes the innovative and creative smart components such as centralised control and monitoring system, sensors, dimmers, innovative lighting in tourist and heritage areas and coverage of un-served areas.
The initiative of State Government he said would be implemented through PPP mode wherein private parties would be selected through open bidding process by EESL. The successful bidder would implement the project
and undertake the operation and maintenance for the period of seven years during which the cost of project along-with the interest would be recovered from the ULBs.
Shri Sudhir Sharma said the RISHTA scheme was being misunderstood by many because it was not the just LED scheme but a holistic scheme that goes far beyond the LED replacements. It include use of centralised control and monitoring system to street lighting smart, mending haphazard cabling through looping, under grounding of power cables at select locations, ensuring hundred percent coverage through additional street lights for un-served areas, innovative lighting in tourist, heritage and market areas, centralised surveillance and security, centralised public announcements and wi-fi services and state government/ULBs would be funding all these innovative features out of its own resources.
Date:
Monday, August 24, 2015