Bhubaneswar, Feb 13: Seven probationers from Indian Administrative Service (IAS) Maharashtra Cadre of 2018 batch today visited the Bhubaneswar Operations Centre (BOC), the command and control centre of the Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited (BSCL) and studied various projects undertaken by the special purpose vehicle to expedite the Smart City Proposal implementation.

The IAS probationers of Maharashtra cadre, visited the BOC and BSCL office as part of the “Ek Bharat Shrestha Bharat’’ and took stock of all the projects including the area-based development, pan-city proposal, implementation of IT-based applications and the Socially Smart Bhubaneswar project in order to make the girls, women, youth and elderly of the slums to have better life and opportunities for their livelihood support.

The visiting IAS probationers from Maharashtra, after listening to the presentations on the various projects, commented especially on the Socially Smart Bhubaneswar, which has got a uniqueness in making the people of urban slums “Smart’’ in socio-economical aspect.

“We are visiting cities across India and have also gone to see several Smart Cities under the “Ek Bharat Shrestha Bharat’’ programme, but we have found that this unique initiative in Bhubaneswar is doing wonders to uplift the life of the slum residents and especially the youths,’’ they observed.

The visiting delegation also praised the IT interventions of pan-city proposal which are helping the citizens in many aspects starting from reducing travel time due to adaptive traffic management system and also adopting various other initiative like vehicle tracking and common payment card.

Earlier the team paid a visit to BOC and saw the practical implementation of the various projects undertaken under the command and control centre. They were briefed about various components of the IT-based interventions and how they are going to help the citizens, civic administration and the police in future days.