Vadodara, 27 November 2014

Speaking at inaugural function of Vadodara Chamber of Commerce and Industry(VCCI) exhibition, Gujarat Chief Minister Anandiben Patel today said that tender of proposed Dholera Smart City project will be out soon. She said Dholera city project, once executed will ease the burden of other cities.

Background:

In February 2013 budget speech, then Finance Minister P.Chidambaram had said that Plans for seven new cities on the Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) have been finalised and work on two new smart industrial cities at Dholera, Gujarat and Shendra Bidkin, Maharashtra will start during 2013-14.

In May 2013, Amitabh Kant, CEO and MD of Delhi Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development Corporation(DMICDC) told Financial Express(FE) that construction work on Dholera city should be able to start within the next 6 month. He further said that town planning for two of the total six phases(152 sq km of 540 sq km developable city) of Rs 70,000 crore Dholera city had been done, while the other four would to be done over the rest of the year. He had added that 105 sq km land for first phase had been got through land pooling. He had said that DMICDC would first build the trunk infrastructure (roads, sewerage, power lines) with funding from the government and concessional financing from the government of Japan. After construction of a part of the trunk infrastructure —100 km of road/utilities would be awarded in Dholera within a year.

In July 2014, Minister of State (Independent Charge) in the Ministry of Commerce & Industry Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman in a written reply in Lok Sabha said that Consortium led by M/s. Halcrow, UK has been appointed for master planning of Ahmedabad-Dholera Investment Region in Gujarat.

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