HC notices on smart city tag to Cuttack

A day after the Centre unveiled a list of 96 smart cities, Orissa High Court today issued notices to it and the state government on a PIL which alleged that the millennium city of Cuttack has been left out from the list in a discriminate manner.
A division bench headed by Chief Justice D H Waghela issued notices to the Union Urban Development Secretary, smart city mission Director and the Odisha chief secretary who is also chairman of the state-level steering committee on smart cities, from among the 11 respondents named in the PIL.
The matter was posted for hearing on September 7.

The Orissa High Court Bar Association President Ashok Mohapatra, who is also chairman of Cuttack Smart City Action Committee, had filed the PIL alleging that the city has been left out of the list of the project by a faulty evaluation of its potentiality by state-level steering committee.
"On the basis of the parameters set to assess the urban local bodies in the state, Cuttack's potentialities have not been properly assessed and it was placed at third position after Bhubaneswar and Rourkela," the PIL said adding the union government had invited names of only two cities from the state to be accorded as smart city status.

The petition claimed that Cuttack should have been placed at the top from among the civic bodies in the state to be considered as a smart city.
With a prayer to quash the state government's July 28, 2015 recommendation in which Cuttack has been placed at third position for consideration of the smart cities in the state, the petition urged the High Court to pass necessary orders in the matter.