Vijayawada secures 4-star rating among nine cities

Vijayawada: Vijayawada city has secured 4-star rating among nine Indian cities, which are top performing cities in Climate Smart Cities Assessment Framework 2.0.

Mayor Rayana Bhagyalakshmi and Vijayawada Municipal Corporation Commissioner Swapnil Dinkar Pundkar along with Deputy City Planner Jubin C Roy, CMOH G Geethabai and Additional Commissioner (Project) K Venkata Satyavathi received the award on Tuesday.

The Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs organised the three-day 'Smart Cities, Smart Urbanisation' event, highlighting some of the important initiatives being implemented in 100 Smart Cities across the country from April 18 in Surat of Gujarat.

It mainly focused on five sub-themes including Reimagining Public Spaces, Digital Governance, Climate Smart Cities, Innovation and Smart Finance.

The Mayor and the VMC Commissioner participated in Climate Smart cities panel discussion along with other winners of Smart Climate cities.

Mayor Bhagyalakshmi stated that even though Vijayawada is not a part of Smart Cities Mission, the city has achieved 4-star rating in Climate Smart Cities Assessment Framework and the city has taken various initiatives under climate actions such as CLAP Mission, installation of solar panels on the rooftops of government and school buildings to increase renewable energy production, 250 CNG auto rickshaws with geo-tagging were used for day-to-day collection of solid waste, proposed for rejuvenation and conservation of water bodies like Payakapuram and three canals passing through the city under 15th Finance Commission Grants, implementation of actions mentioned in the Water Resource Management Plan under AMRUT 2.0.

VMC Commissioner Swapnil stated that Vijayawada, being one of the most densely populated cities, also has many barriers such as railway lines, three major canals crossing the city which leaves bare minimum developable space.

Over the past few years, the city has taken many initiatives for increasing the green belt development, by removing the encroachments along the Krishna bank, development of green belts along the unused space of railway lines and canals. Median and Junction improvements were also taken into the consideration.