In its bid to give a thrust to the Government’s Smart City Mission, New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC), has installed 15 energy saving smart poles in the Connaught place in Delhi. The poles boast of air sensors, energy-saving LED lighting and WiFi connectivity. Lights of these poles would automatically be dimmed for saving energy during non-peak traffic hours.

This step by NDMC is a new initiative where sensor based smart lighting technology will help the city run more efficiently making it look futuristic at the same time.

One of the first 20 cities selected under Smart Cities Mission of Ministry of Urban Development in January 2016, NDMC has been undertaking a lot of projects under its smart city plan with this one being the latest.

Naresh Kumar, the civic body’s Chairman had confirmed earlier this year that the smart city projects will be completed before the scheduled deadline period of 2020 out of which most of the work was slated to be administered by this October and the remaining by March, 2018. In its official release in the month of July this year, NDMC also stated that it has set up solar panels with 3.30 MW of power generation capacity on building roofs. The civic body was also mulling over installing solar panels on central government’s office buildings, either for free or at a nominal charge.

Of the Rs. 1,800 crore Smart City Plan of NDMC, the major projects include setting up of a unified command and control center, multi-level parking at Khan Market, public bike sharing, sewage treatment plants, re-design of 13 roads totalling 31 kms, including 7 leading to Connaught place, India Investment Centre at Yashwant Place, Shivaji Terminal Transport Hub, World Class Skill Centre at Moti Bagh and Paryatan Bhawan.

NDMC promises that its USP is “governance through technology” and also boasts of 311 mobile app which it envisages to digitize every service such as electricity bills, property tax, water bills, birth and death certificates etc amid a host of other technology enabled initiatives.