Srinagar: Jammu and Kashmir Chief Minister Omar Abdullah on Tuesday said an inquiry would be conducted into the Srinagar Smart City Project after rains caused waterlogging in several areas, including the civil secretariat here, and blamed the city’s drainage system.
The chief minister said the council of ministers has already decided to undertake a third-party audit of the project.
The inundation of the ground floor of the civil secretariat on Monday was a “shame”, Abdullah said at a press conference.
“It is not an ordinary issue. Let the weather improve. We will have an inquiry conducted into it and then take collective action,” he said.
“After seeing that there was a difference between what the project intended to achieve and its actual position, the cabinet, in its last meeting, decided that there should be a third-party audit to check the effectiveness of the project,” he said.
Abdullah added that the audit has not been ordered yet.
“Unfortunately, you don’t get an opportunity to ask this question to those people who need to answer this question. Those people who brought and implemented the Smart City Project here, and those people from whom we inherited about ten per cent of the work to complete the project, they need to be asked that except one — the Jhelum riverfront project — where else did the money for the Smart City Project go?” he said.
Abdullah said the government will utilise “the resources it has” to improve the drainage system in Srinagar city. “But, such an old issue, which they could not rectify, cannot be addressed in a short time,” he said.
The chief minister added that people who have suffered losses due to rains will be compensated as per rules after an assessment.(PTI)
