Ahmedabad Municipal Commissioner Vijay Nehra talks to CY about civic initiatives

The AMC-Amdavad Municipal Corporation has been steadily announcing many citizen friendly initiatives across the board. They have also been successful in garnering citizen participation for many of its project, highlight of which is the recently  announced #SwachchSabarmati campaign.

We took this opportunity to talk with the man of the moment Vijay Nehra, Municipal Commissioner of Ahmedabad and asked him about his vision for a healthy, clean, safe and an inclusive city. We also spoke with department heads about the ongoing projects like the Mission Million Trees, Law Garden Food Street development, Mt. Pirana bio-mining as well as the initiatives in developing the heritage and cultural assets of city.

To give you a little bit of trivia on the Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation – It was established in 1950 for the civic infrastructure and administrative responsibilities of the city. However it all initiated as a committee, which was formed in 1873 to fortify the walls within the walled city of Ahmedabad. Since then the AMC has been working to keep the city efficient and it is the AMC which made the World Heritage City tag possible. Vijay Nehra is the 33rd Municipal Commissioner and is focused on the core agenda of improving citizen’s standard of living.

In this video we get to hear from the commissioner about the three new initiatives – Swachh Sabarmati, Mission Million trees and the Joint Enforcement Team (JET) which kicked off on World Environment Day – The projects will make littering a punishable offence, increase green cover beyond 4.66% in Ahmedabad and clean the garbage in Sabarmati river by Gandhi Jayanti which is on October 2, 2019.

Jignesh Patel Director, Parks & Gardens, shares with us details of the new Law garden Food Street design and the new facilities in the pipeline at various parks. We also spoke with Harshadray Solanki director of Solid Waste Management, he talks about the gargantuan task they have taken up of cleaning the Mt Pirana – a blot on the city’s skyline. Along with physical infrastrucure the city also needs cultural infrastructure for life to thrive. We chat with Ashish Trambadia, Director of Ahmedabad World Heritage City Trust talking about how the Heritage department is gaining people participation and how things are changing.

We look forward to a cleaner, greener, safe and a culturally rich city. As Nehra puts it, it is people’s participation that makes things happen, and the citizenry has to continue with their contributions to make Ahmedabad among the most beautiful city of the world.