Smart city campaign Bilaspur

Bilaspur Municipal corporation began doing citizen consultation in a bid to engage more and more citizens in the smart city campaign. This has been one of the biggest campaign the city has witnessed, more than 50000 people got involved in the smart city initiative through different platforms.

Media engagement

A nonstop media campaign was launched simultaneously for Smart city Bilaspur. The promotional campaign was run on the Dainik Bhaskar, Navbharat and Haribhoomi newspapers. These campaigns were organized between October and November. For any promotional campaign social media has emerged as one of the most effective tool in recent times, a successful social media was run by the BMC on various platforms i.e facebook, twitter and instagram connecting over 20000 people. Facebook was also used for organizing polls for the selection of area based and PAN city projects.

Citizen Consultation meetings

Citizen consultation meetings were the integral part of Bilaspur Smart City campaign, ward level meetings were organized to gather their suggestions on what in their opinion Bilaspur can do to become a smart city. In addition to the ward level meetings, consultation meetings with various associations of Bilaspur i.e architect association, chamber of commerce, industries association etc were organized separately.

To connect the youth of the city with the campaign, consultation with students of schools and colleges was done on a daily basis in the month of October.

During all these consultation meetings suggestions from citizens have been documented in the form of survey forms and online on mygov.in. The details of the number of suggestions gathered through different forms are shown in the table given-

The objective of organizing these consultation meetings was not just to gather suggestion on paper, but to have brainstorming sessions on how the citizens actually see Bilaspur as.

In most of the consultations meetings the SWOT analysis of the city on a broad level was done.

The compiled ideas on what are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of the city formulated during the consultation meetings are given here

STRENGTH: ARPA river passing through the city, availability of mineral resources, High court, access to good medical facilities, Vacant land, cheap land cost, military camp.

WEAKNESS: Topography of the city, roads are narrow in the city, lack of proper sewerage network, lack of employment opportunities, little co-ordination between different government departments.

OPPORTUNITIES: Expanding tourism sector, upgrading existing infrastructure, develop skill development centres, scope for expanding municipal area.

THREAT: Lack of awareness in people about their responsibilities for the city, pollution, security at night(specially for women), alcohol consumption.

The support of the people during the overall campaign was overwhelming.
These campaigns have provided valuable insights on what the citizen of Bilaspur is expecting as Bilaspur prepares intensively to become a future smart city.

Essay, Painting competition

The Bilaspur Municipal Corporation organized essay and painting competitions separately for students and for open category in the city. People submitted their entries in huge numbers in the both the competitions, there were very intelligent and valuable inputs given by the people through their essays and paintings.