CHENNAI: As many as 47 projects worth Rs 571.53 crore, taken up as pan-city initiatives under the Smart Cities Mission in Tamil Nadu, did not actually meet the pan-city definition, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) has found.
The works largely involved conventional infrastructure without any smart solution or IT component. The finding is part of CAG’s Performance Audit covering 7 sampled cities: Chennai, Coimbatore, Erode, Madurai, Salem, Tirunelveli and Tirupur.
Pan-city development was meant to apply smart solutions such as intelligent traffic management, wastewater recycling and smart water meters to existing city-wide infrastructure using technology.
The seven cities had initially proposed 37 projects costing Rs 1,488.59 crore, but 69 projects worth Rs 780.77 crore were eventually executed.
On scrutiny, CAG found only 22 projects costing Rs 209.24 crore actually qualified. The remaining 47 ineligible projects (Rs 571.53 crore) were spread across 5 cities: Coimbatore, Erode, Salem, Tirunelveli and Tirupur.
They implemented projects such as Micro Composting Centres, incineration plants, solid-waste vehicles, solar power plants and underground sewerage works which are normally expected from urban local bodies to build.
City-wise, Coimbatore had 7 ineligible projects, including LED street lighting (Rs 73.51 crore), UGSS internal plumbing and tank construction (Rs 26.21 crore), and Micro Compost Centres at 36 locations (Rs 21.22 crore).
Erode had 16 ineligible projects, among them a Rs 145.33 crore water supply distribution system and a STEM park with a digital planetarium. Salem had 16, Tirunelveli two, and Tirupur six.
Meanwhile, several genuinely tech-oriented projects from the original proposals were dropped altogether.
Chennai’s Street Light Monitoring System (Rs 248 crore) and Intelligent Traffic Management System (Rs 100 crore); Coimbatore’s CCTV camera and server network (Rs 80 crore); Erode’s e-Health project (Rs 250 crore); and Tirunelveli’s Intelligent Traffic Management System (Rs 74.90 crore).
The audit also noted deficiencies in SCADA-based water projects in Tirunelveli and Salem. SCADA (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition) is a technology used to monitor, control, and automate water treatment and distribution.
In Tirunelveli, an unplanned SCADA system estimated at Rs 46.67 crore had an energy meter that had remained non-functional since December 2023, while remote terminal units and control points for collecting and monitoring water-flow data had not been provided.
In Salem, a Rs 74.88 crore SCADA-based 24x7 water-supply project was still incomplete two years after its projected completion date.