Ahmedabad/Mumbai: Providing a major impetus to India’s green mission, the Indian Green Building Council (IGBC) has awarded its prestigious Green City ‘Platinum’ Rating to Dholera Special Investment Region (DSIR), an industrial city coming up in Gujarat near Ahmedabad as part of the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) project.

Dholera City, with a total footprint of over 920 sq. km. and developable area of 540 sq. km. is India’s largest upcoming Green City. The ratings certificate was presented by Mr Tai Lee Siang, Chairperson, World Green Building Council, today at the IGBC’s Green Building Congress 2016 in Mumbai.

Land allotment procedures for the Dholera City have been approved by the SPV Board and it will start in a month. Land initially will be allotted on a first-come-first-served basis and later auctioned. The Dholera Industrial City Development Limited (DICDL) has released new policies and incentives that have generated keen interest from investors.

Meanwhile, Dholera has become one of the first few cities in the world and the first greenfield city in India to achieve the IGBC Green City rating. It has been selected based on credit points achieved in seven environmental categories as defined by IGBC Green Cities rating: Eco-vision; Land Use Planning and Built Environment; Health and Well-Being; Sustainability Mobility; Water, Energy and Infrastructure Management, Information and Communications Technology; and Innovation in City Planning, besides the IGBC mandatory requirements.

Mr Alkesh Kumar Sharma, CEO & MD, DMICDC, said the city’s world-class infrastructure is benchmarked against best practices from around the world and would incorporate such features like efficient mobility planning; 100% treatment and reuse of waste water; 100% collection of solid waste with no public dumping of waste; storm water management and rain water harvesting.
Dholera is conceived as a green city right from the design stage and the project team have made concerted efforts towards this direction. In the days to come, Dholera City will offer growth opportunities to industrial anchor tenants in various sectors like defence, aerospace and heavy engineering.

“The Platinum rating will ultimately benefit our customers because the life cycle costs of running Dholera will be less than other cities. IGBC’s recognition has given us yet another opportunity to re-dedicate ourselves in developing a world class green city, where health, quality and well-being of the citizens is given top-most priority,’ Mr Sharma said.

Similar practices and standards have been set up for other greenfield cities under development in DMIC project.
Dr Prem C Jain, Chairman, IGBC said that Dholera is “a project the nation can be proud of and it has become a leader in treading the green path by setting global benchmarks in city planning”.

“With the government’s focus on developing smart cities, Dholera comes as an inspiration for all the upcoming greenfield cities in India,” he said.

Construction work on Dholera began in April 2016 with the award of contracts worth Rs 2,300 crores for the roads and underground services, ABCD building, water treatment plant, sewage treatment plant and ICT. The ICT work includes state-of-the-art design for City Integrated Operations Centre, E-Governance, City applications (including analytics), Data Centre, City-wide network and City dashboards.

Mr. Jagdish Salgaonkar, Program Director, AECOM, who is managing the overall implementation, expressed confidence in way the project is shaping up. “Our priority is now to get key anchor tenants so that we can start populating the city,” he said.

DeshGujarat