Maharashtra government to partially fund 18 stalled JNNURM projects

Nearly three years after the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led central government stopped the Congress regime’s flagship urban renewal scheme stalling several projects, the Maharashtra government has decided to fund the completion of 18 such works stuck in the state.

The projects, originally planned under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), are mostly related to water supply, sewerage and solid waste infrastructure. They are spread across cities such as Pune, Pimpri Chinchwad, Thane, Nanded, Malvan, Nagpur, Dhule and so on.

The state cabinet on Tuesday decided to contribute Rs843 crore towards the projects and has set a target of completing them in the next two years. This includes its own contribution of Rs333 crore towards the projects as per JNNURM norms as well as 80 per cent of what was originally to be the Centre’s contribution.

Under JNNURM, the Union government was expected to contribute 50 per cent of the cost of every project approved. Soon after the BJP-led government came into power at the Centre, it halted the JNNURM scheme and launched its own urban development scheme – the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT).

The 18 projects stuck in Maharashtra were supposed to get Rs636 crore from the Centre. The BJP-led state government will now spend Rs508.8 crore, which is 80 per cent of the amount, while the urban local bodies implementing the projects will have to shell out the rest.

An official from the state urban development department said, “We sorted the pending JNNURM projects under two categories — ones that can be discontinued at the current stage and the ones that need to be completed as per the original plan for them to boost a city’s infrastructure.”

The government mostly weeded out projects that involve procurement of buses or construction of independent roads and decided to focus on completing water supply, solid waste or sewerage projects that will only help a city if the entire planned network is built, the official added.

Since last year, the state urban development department has been trying to complete infrastructure development projects being implementing by urban local bodies by helping them with resources, resolving obstacles and taking regular reviews.

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