Gujarat has been at the forefront of using innovation and modern technology in governance. The state has taken several innovative governance measures and extensively used modern technology in municipalities and local government with a view to enhance transparency and effectiveness. With 11 SKOCH Orders-of-Merit and four awards, Gujarat is a PERFORMER state in this year’s study. Gujarat bagged all the four awards in Silver category. The maximum number of awards went in Municipal Governance segment. Municipalities from Gujarat bagged six SKOCH Orders-of-Merit and three awards in Silver category.

Key Achievements

Surat Municipal Corporation has taken pro-active steps to ensure supply of water in the city under the initiative named ‘Veljibhai’. The Corporation supplies more than 1,100 MLD of potable water on daily basis covering over 50-lakh population through piped water supply system. For the same, eight water works, 30 water distribution stations and transmission and distribution network of more than 3,450 km length have been established. Veljibhai is a character that visits door-to-door and asks citizens their problems related to drinking water supply. Marginalised and poor in the city are generally forced to live in inhuman conditions on unauthorised places called slums. Their problem is not just the lack of income. They face scarcity of everything – lack of assets, lack of power, lack of legal rights, lack of the resources or contacts necessary to secure political advantage and lack of access to education leading to very poor quality of life. Surat Municipal Corporation has introduced various Slum Rehabilitation Projects. For updating slum data, the Corporation carried out biometric survey of all the slum-dwellers. Each household has been provided a smart card, which can be utilised for availing all the services to be provided in future. After collecting all the slum data and livelihood data, Surat Municipal Corporation has identified slums for rehabilitation, slums for redevelopment and slum that needs to upgrade and prepared the detailed strategies to make the Surat a slum-free city.

Gandhinagar Municipal Corporation is working on Smart City project. The integral component of Smart City services is Integrated Command and Control Centre that integrates traffic management solution (Speed detection cameras, Automatic Number Plate Recognition) and City Surveillance System. It also includes enabling of Wi-Fi services, environmental sensors and digital boards.

Gujarat Energy Development Agency is promoting Residential Solar Rooftop Scheme through subsidies and awareness creation campaign. The state government aims to encourage large-scale conversion of blank residential rooftops to the potential sites for solar power generation.

Gujarat Narmada Valley Fertilisers and Chemicals Limited has transformed into 100 per cent e-GNFC in all its departments, including township. The entire transition from cash to cashless was completed in a short span of 10 days.