Bhubaneswar, Oct. 5: The agency executing the smart city plan has entered into an agreement with Niti Aayog for periodic review of various projects to ensure their timely completion.

The agreement was inked yesterday for providing end-to-end transaction management for smart city utility for Bhubaneswar Town Centre District on 985 acres along Janpath, which will be reshaped under the area-based development component of the Smart Cities Mission.

Officials of Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited, the special purpose vehicle to implement the plan, will submit the projects' transactional details to Niti Aayog on fortnightly basis - which will help in better monitoring of their status, and in effect, ensuring their timely completion. The officials will upload the status online for periodic review of the projects in New Delhi.

'We have started working on some projects, including smart traffic signalling system and smart Janpath. There are also several other important and huge projects awaiting execution. A proper monitoring system is essential for that. Niti Aayog will help us in that,' said mayor Ananta Narayan Jena.

According to the proposal, the Bhubaneswar Town Centre District - spread from Bapuji Nagar to Satya Nagar - will see a number of projects under the mission, such as a railway station multi-modal hub, an institutional core area, four housing projects, an artificial lake, a smart road and several others.

Jena said the smart traffic signalling system had already been functional at 20 junctions, while its installation was under way at 44 other junctions. 'We are also going to start working on area-based development of the Janpath - for which the assistance of Niti Aayog will come handy,' said the mayor.

The administration has already decided to start working on the railway station multi-modal hub project from January, which will give a facelift to Master Canteen Square, where the city's main railway station is located. It will be the first major project on the Janpath.

The smart city officials are planning to float tenders for another 11 projects by March next year. 'We are giving more priority to those projects, which could be complete without much hurdle,' said an official of Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited.

Residents, however, are yet to witness any actual transformation of the city under the ambitious mission. 'It has been almost two years since the city was adjudged the country's first smart city. But so far, I can only see new traffic lights. No other transformation is visible,' said Unit-IX resident Minakshi Hota.