Launched with fanfare in 2015, Nagpur’s Smart City Mission was supposed to catapult the city into a new era of tech-savvy governance and world-class infrastructure. Instead, a decade later, the only thing it successfully delivered is a masterclass in unfinished business.
In East Nagpur, the flagship 49.76 km road network was meant to revolutionize mobility. Less than half was completed. Another 13.5 km made it into fresh work orders—while the rest? Trapped in land acquisition limbo.
Of 28 bridges planned, only 10 got built. No surprise—the rest are stuck on file or simply abandoned.
Then came 65 “smart kiosks” to simplify citizen services. Fancy terminals with no backend support. Today, they’re just digital furniture.
Out of 50 e-toilets, barely half were installed. Maintenance? Non-existent. The contractor vanished, and all units are defunct.
A smart sewer network with SCADA automation was promised. Progress? Virtually zero. No pipes, no sensors—just a PDF.
Job creation projections spoke of 135,000 temporary and 50 permanent jobs. With half the mission shelved, those numbers collapsed along with the plans.
Even the 2015 crowd-sourced Idea Challenge, which invited public ideas with rewards, quietly disappeared. No rewards, no feedback—no trace.
Nagpur’s Smart City dream has ended. What remains is a scattered maze of half-finished roads, silent kiosks, shuttered toilets, and aspirations that never made it past the tendering stage.
Nagpur-specific Smart City project failures:
Only 26 km of roads were completed out of the planned 49.76 km in ABD areas.
Out of 28 planned bridges in ABD zones, only 10 were constructed.
65 smart kiosks installed across the city remain non-functional.
Only 25 out of 50 planned e-toilets were installed and later shut down.
Affordable housing projects under the mission remain incomplete.
Command and Control Centre is only partially operational, lacking full integration.
Smart City Idea Challenge winners were never rewarded or implemented.
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