Indore: Champion your local identity, Mayor Pushyamitra Bhargav advice at U20

Indore (Madhya Pradesh): Mayor Pushyamitra Bhargav had a piece of advice for his counterparts from other cities, municipal commissioners and CEOs Smart cities from 60 cities attending U20 event on Thursday.

“Champion your local identity and that will power you to excel on other fronts too,” he said while addressing the inaugural function of U20 programme at Brilliant Convention Centre.

“For us, the identity of being the cleanest city worked. Though our traditional identity has been our rich heritage and food but we connected ourself with cleanliness and emerged as the cleanest city of the country for six times in a row. With excellence in cleanliness, we grew on other fronts too. Investment tricked in, institutions made a beeline for Indore and companies started coming to the city,” he said.

He stated that due to cleanliness Indore became a brand and when they floated green bonds for setting up a solar power station people from 28 states subscribed the public issue.

MP Shankar Lalwani was the chief guest of the inaugural function whereas principal secretary (urban development and housing) Neeraj Mandloi, Smart City Mission director Kunal Kumar, Collector Dr Illayaraja T, Indore municipal commissioner Harshika Singh and All India Institute of Local Self-Government deputy director general Ravi Ranjan Guru were present as special guests.

Continuing his address, Bhargav said that six priority areas had been selected for U20 Mayors Summit to be held in July.

“We are working on all six areas,” he added.

The priority areas include encouraging environmentally responsive behavior, ensuring water security, accelerating climate finance, leveraging local potential and identity, reinventing urban governance and planning frameworks, catalyzing digital urban future, and championing local identity.

The U20 event organised on Thursday deliberated on three of the six priority areas viz catalyzing digital urban future, reinventing urban governance and planning frameworks.

Municipal commissioner Harshika Singh said that the blueprint prepared from the deliberation in Indore would become part of final draft of U20 Mayor Summit to be held in Ahmedabad.

Need to focus on capacity building: PS

Neeraj Mandloi said that urban bodies focus on capacity building. “This is one area where much emphasis has not been laid. It is high time that urban bodies work on it for multi-tasking,” he said. The PS also pushed for inclusive governance, transparency and accountability, transparency and environmental sustainability.

Our public transport will be all EVs: Ahemdabad mayor

Ahemdabad mayor Kirikumar J Parmar said, “We are working on rolling out all EV buses in Ahemdabad. Currently, around 200 EV buses are plying on roads. We have set a target of making all buses EVs.” He also claimed that Ahemdabad was one of the leading urban bodies in the country.

‘Tenure of all mayors should be same’

While talking to reporters, Akhil Bharatiya Mahapaur Parishad president Madhurai Patel said that they would bring a proposal for approval of Akhil Bharatiya Mahapaur Sabha for uniform tenure of mayors. “We have seen that tenures of mayors are different in various states,” she said.