Bhubaneswar, Nov. 7: The corporation today signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) to give a final touch to the smart city proposal.

Till date, CII has signed 11 MoUs with various cities across the country, which is designated by the Centre as smart cities and are currently in a race to secure a berth in the first phase list of 20. The Union urban development ministry has identified 98 cities for smart city status.

Bhubaneswar has chosen urban mobility and waste management as its two smart solutions.

Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC) commissioner Krishan Kumar said: "The MoU is for knowledge and experience sharing and it will help in getting more feedbacks and ideas from industry players. Also, with the citizens' connect initiative, we are targeting all groups in the city." Calling for more assistance from the CII, so that job creation and formation of more start-up units is enhanced in the city by young entrepreneurs as per the vision document of the smart city concept, Kumar said: "The local industries should come forward to mentor start-ups and also engage local youth in the job sector.''

CII senior consultant (infrastructure) Manvendra Deswal told The Telegraph: "We at CII are ready to share our years of knowledge with BMC so that even after the proposals are implemented, they can call us to fix their problems since we interact with Indian and foreign industries at local and global level."

Development commissioner-cum-additional chief secretary U.N. Behera, managing director of Tata Steel Limited and vice-president of Gopalpur Project Arun Misra and convener of CII Odisha smart city task force Tapan Kumar Mohanty also spoke in the preliminary session of a round table meet on smart city.

Later during the technical session, topics such as citizen connect, smart urban mobility, solid waste management and initiatives taken by CII national mission on smart cities were discussed.

Nitin Cherian, a consultant of the BMC's communication team said: "Till date 27.5 per cent population of the city has contributed their share of involvement in the smart city project through various initiatives on the social media.''

Experts on solid waste management and urban mobility also spoke on the city's current requirements and the future plans.