Bhagalpur: The Bhagalpur Smart City Company Ltd has asked the firm entrusted to implement the smart city mission here to explain the year's delay in starting work on the action plan.

Bhagalpur divisional commissioner Rajesh Kumar, who is chairman of the special purpose vehicle, has given Project Development and Management Consultant a month's time to start work or face action.

The firm is assigned work on solid waste management, smart road, heritage walk and river front development as part of the Bhagalpur action plan. But no work - not even a request for proposal - has been started.

"The Project Development and Management Consultant has not yet started work and failed to prepare the request for proposal for any of the projects. The Union ministry of urban development has already asked the company to take the projects seriously," said Bhagalpur municipal commissioner S.B. Meena, also the chief executive officer of the Bhagalpur Smart City Company Ltd.

The special purpose vehicle after a meeting on Saturday, Meena said, has resolved to give the firm a month to improve its work or face action.

Divisional commissioner Rajesh chaired the meeting attended by Meena and district magistrate Adesh Titarmare.

Sources in the Bhagalpur Municipal Corporation said the firm has failed to pick a dumping place for garbage, devise any modern concept to maintain cleanliness or recycle waste materials under solid waste management.

As part of smart road - installing dividers and pedestrian crossings and setting up traffic lights - it was decided to upgrade the 3.5km road from the district magistrate's residence to Nayabazar Chowk as a pilot project. But the road brought down to 1km till Manali Chowk and still nothing expedited on the implementation of the project.

Under the heritage walk plan, important buildings like the house where novelist Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay spent his childhood were identified for conservation. To develop the parts of the city located on the Ganga's banks, the firm claimed to introduce projects on the lines of the river front development work on the banks of the Hooghly river in Calcutta.

The company was invited to conduct a survey but sources said nothing was taken up later.