Lieutenant Governor, Girish Chandra Murmu today held an interaction session with the Councillors of Srinagar Municipal Corporation (SMC) at SKICC.Along with the Councillors, SMC Mayor, Junaid Azim Mattu, Divisional Commissioner Kashmir, Baseer Ahmed Khan, IGP Kashmir Vijay Kumar, Deputy Mayor Srinagar, Parvaiz Ahmed Qadri; SMC Commissioner Gazanfar Ali; VC LAWDA, Tufail Matto and other senior officers also attended the session.While addressing the Councillors, the Lt Governor said that the government believes in empowerment of elected representatives who work at the grassroots level to provide succour to the people. “After the abrogation of Article 370, we empowered Panchayat representatives and now it is your turn to get empowered,” he said, adding that a notification would be issued soon for defining the powers, status and protocol of the Councillors.On being apprised about the issue of hike in Ward Development Fund, the Lt Governor assured that positive steps would be taken in this regard soon and the Councillors would be in a better position to take care of their areas after that.The Lt Governor further said that everyone has to play a constructive role whether he is a Councillor or an official and it is imperative to maintain synergy between officials and Councillors for enhancing the performance of the SMC.Emphasizing on the revamping of SMC, the Lt Governor said that there is a need to update rules, functioning, jurisdiction and mandate of the corporation. He stressed on the need to make roads, electricity, drinking water and drainage sector as the domain of the concerned Councillors. “Srinagar city has to be developed in a planned manner. Master plan has to be implemented for fulfilling futuristic needs of the city.
The practice of doing works in bits and pieces has to be done away with,” he said.The Lt Governor observed that the entire developmental activity has to be done in a planned way. Spatial Planning has to take the centre stage and places need to be identified where government departments, shopping malls, recreation facilities, parking and other structures would come up and in every building aesthetics and a touch of local architecture should be maintained, he added. He also asked the SMC officials to create capacity building for efficient administrative structure, enforcement, sanitation with futuristic perspective planning, besides ensuring compliance of building permissions strictly as per rules and creation of assets for providing more facilities to the people of Srinagar.Earlier, SMC Mayor, Junaid Azim Mattu and Commissioner SMC, Gazanfar Ali, in a power point presentation gave an overall view of the functioning of the corporation and challenges faced by it. A brief account of implementation of centrally sponsored schemes, works under AMRUT, SBM, JTFRP and 14th Finance Commission were given out, besides information was also given on the various developmental works undertaken in the Srinagar city.The Councillors also raised several issues pertaining to their wards and sought intervention of Lt Governor in speeding up the development in their respective wards, on which, the Lt Governor assured them to address the same for their early redressal.