The state government few days ago developed a new mechanism of development for the capital city Srinagar after keeping a separate city development plan and removing it from the district development plans. According to government the aim of developing the Capital City Development Plan (CCDP) is to augment the fact track development in the city without any hassles. It has also ensured to invest the local resources in addition of financial support by the central government under multiple urban development schemes. The disclosure of the programme by Chief Minister, Mehbooba Mufti has come in a board meeting at Srinagar where all the political leaders from the ruling People’s Democratic Party (PDP) especially hailing from Srinagar district were present apart from the state machinery. The pace of organized development in Srinagar city is the need of an hour as it has been crumbling on many fronts and fails to cater the growing challenges of urbanisation. But the decision of government to remove the city from the district development plan and incorporate it under CCDP can be questioned here. The capital city is very less depending on the state plans and has multiple centrally sponsored schemes in vogue. In fact there has been no dearth of funding from New Delhi under Urban Development Schemes but what defeated their motives was the poor execution, corruption and lack of accountability in the system. The under construction Rambagh, Jahanagir chowk flyover and the expansion of Batamaloo-Qamarwari road and many other projects are the best examples of state governments callousness in building pressure on executing agencies to complete the developmental projects in a slated time. Tightening the screws of the executive agencies for speedy completion of developmental works can deliver the results not changing the names of schemes. Srinagar is badly in need of massive developmental douse which requires the sincerity of government otherwise this will only prove a hoax and political point for the PDP ahead of upcoming elections for the parliamentary seat which fell vacant after its senior party leader Tariq Hamid Karra resigned. In 2014 Assembly elections for the first time, the party won many seats in city and substantially shook the traditional base of National Conference.
The editorial appeared in print edition of 8 to 14 March, 2017.
