PIONEER NEWS SERVICE/ Bharadisain
The Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) indicted the Dehradun Smart City Limited (DSCL) for financial mismanagement and other irregularities as per its report tabled by the State government in the Vidhan Sabha earlier this week. The report is learnt to have advised the State government to address operational deficiencies in the project
It is learnt from sources that the CAG has found irregularities amounting to Rs 5.19 crore in project management consultant (PMC) payments for remuneration claims and implementation of the ‘Cities Investment to Innovate, Integrate and Sustain Project’. Further, it found violation of procurement rules and reimbursement without records, stating that the PMC’s manpower deployment had violated the terms of the contract, resulting in unverified and invalid payments, thereby weakening financial integrity.
The report also finds that many smart solutions mentioned in the DPR were either removed during implementation itself or were non-functional due to inadequate planning and implementation. As per the report, the biometric and sensor based Solid Waste Management (SWM) module, developed in March 2022 for real-time monitoring of the entire waste collection process under the e-governance solution of the Doon Integrated Command and Control Centre project, had remained unutilised till February 2025, rendering an expenditure of Rs 4.55 crore useless.
The CAG report is learnt to have mentioned that the smart solutions installed at a cost of Rs 5.91 crore in three government schools in Dehradun under the Smart School project ( interactive boards, computer labs, projectors, e-content, CCTV and biometric attendance) remained non-functional due to the inability of schools to bear excessive electricity bills.
As per sources, the report mentions that DSCL was unable to provide liability free work sites to the executing agencies, resulting in delays of 19 months to 38 months in the completion of eight projects. It is further learnt that as per the report, the DSCL failed to recover unutilised funds amounting to Rs 19.06 crore from executing agencies.
Notably, Dehradun was the only city selected under the Centre’s Smart City Mission and the CAG conducted its audit in 2023-24 covering the period from 2018-23.
