The Hindu : Front Page : Citizens’ advisory group formed

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Wednesday, Aug 08, 2007
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Citizens’ advisory group formed

K.V. Prasad

For total solution: The new panel will help the Coimbatore Corporation identify the city’s infrastructure needs.

COIMBATORE: The Coimbatore Corporation has formed a City Technical Advisory Group to identify the infrastructure needs of the city and recommend methods to implement schemes.

The committee, comprising experts from various fields such as traffic designing and infrastructure (flyovers), transportation (Bus Rapid Transit System), water resources conservation and waste management, was launched here on Monday by Union Minister of State for Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation Kumari Selja.

It will function on the lines of the National Technical Advisory Group that has been constituted to provide citizens’ inputs critical for the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission schemes in 63 cities. The formation of such a committee is mandatory under the mission. Schemes will be approved by the Union Government only if they have been formulated with the participation of stakeholders (the beneficiary public).

The needs of the people have to be first ascertained in the form of inputs from them. This is a condition laid by the Central Government for funding the mission schemes. The Corporation has formed five committees as part of the core advisory group to work out plans for urban governance, urban poverty alleviation, urban planning, urban engineering and urban finance and accounting.

The poverty alleviation component will have two sub-committees for counselling and policy directions and also planning and implementation. Some of the group members are: Vanita Mohan, Managing Trustee of Siruthuli (a public initiative to revive and conserve water resources), D. Balasundaram, president of the Indian Chamber of Commerce and Industry, S.P. Palaniswamy, a former professor of Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, and infrastructure consultant.

Engineers, architects, faculty of engineering in colleges, social activists, environmentalists, chartered accountants and experts in e-governance are the other members of the advisory group.

While these groups will function broadly for the entire city, localised City Volunteer Technical Corps will also be formed with volunteers at the community level. Its members will look after sub-components of the City Development Plan that contains schemes for Rs. 3,186 crore.

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