Mangaluru, (The HIndu): Councillors in the Mangaluru City Corporation on Thursday questioned the Mayor and the Commissioner for keeping the council in the dark on the progress of the smart city scheme.

Raising the subject, Deepak Poojary, a former chairman of the Standing Committee for Town Planning Improvement, said though the projects under the scheme were meant for the development of the city, a majority of councillors have not been briefed periodically on the projects to be taken up under the scheme.

Mr. Poojary asked why the special purpose vehicle (which is a company floated for the implementation of the projects under the scheme) has proposed to take up works such as widening and upgrading small stretches of road under the scheme.

He questioned the basis on which some of the road works have been proposed: like a small stretch of Nehru Madian Road, Bibi Alabi Road and the like.

Some other councillors said the council has not been taken into confidence while proposing the projects.

Mohammed Nazir, commissioner, said that a special meeting of the council would have to be called for briefing the councillors on the projects proposed.

The commissioner said of the 65 projects proposed, concept plans of 27 have been approved. In that, the detailed project reports of three are ready.

Referring to issues relating to solid waste management, the commissioner said the corporation on August 30 served a notice to Antony Waste Handling Cell Pvt. Ltd., handling the solid waste in the city, to explain some of the lapses.

The reply by the company was not satisfactory. The company has not bothered to reply to the lapses pointed out. It has responded only to bills due to it from the civic body.

Though the councillors wanted to know for how many hours, the civic workers of the company worked in a day none replied to it properly.

Premananda Shetty, a councillor, said the civic body has taken up dredging of large storm water drains in some areas even before the process of selecting the agency through bidding was finalised. In some wards, dredging works have not been taken up.

Month’s deadline

Mayor Kavita Sanil gave a one-month deadline for the officials for removing illegal petty shops in the city.

At the meeting of the council on Thursday, she said the officials should seal the shops if its owners did not obtain trade licence within a month. Such owners should be served notices within a week.

The Mayor said raids on illegal massage parlours in the city would be resumed next month as Karnataka High Court has upheld the recent action of the Mayor in such a case.