Smart City Mission adds 9 more cities including Bareilly, Erode; total now 99

Senior Congress leader Sonia Gandhi’s constituency Rae Bareilly and Delhi’s next door neighbour Ghaziabad are among the four cities from Uttar Pradesh that have failed to make it to the list of 100 smart cities, nine of which were chosen on Friday.

The nine cities that made the cut include three from Uttar Pradesh – Bareilly, Moradabad and Saharanpur, Bihar Sharif (Bihar), Erode (Tamil Nadu), Silvassa (Dadra and Nagar Havelli), Daman and Diu, Itanagar (Arunachal Pradesh) and Kavaratti (Lakshadweep).

With this 99 cities have been selected under the NDA government’s flagship program, launched by Prime Minister Narender Modi in June 2015. The Centre was to announce the names of the final ten cities on Friday but one of them, Shillong, could not submit its proposal. The state government has been given two weeks time to submit its proposal failing which; another city will be selected.

Among the states, West Bengal has chosen not participate in the competition to choose smart cities. Only one city from the state – New Town – was selected when the second list was announced in September 2016 but with the state deciding to walk out of the program soon after, there is no progress on the ground.

“New Town is yet to form a special purpose vehicle to start implementing the projects,” Housing and urban affairs minister Hardeep Singh Puri said at a press conference in the Capital.

The total proposed investment in the 99 cities will be to the tune of Rs 2.03 lakh crore.

“The nine cities selected have proposed an investment of Rs 12,824 crore. This will impact 35.3 lakh persons living in these areas,” Puri said at a press conference to announce the name of nine cities.

The minister said that as on January, 189 projects worth Rs 2237 crore have been completed while another 2,948 projects worth Rs 1.38 lakh crore are in various stages of implementation.

Meant to change the way urban India lives, smart cities will enjoy uninterrupted power and water supplies, internet connectivity, e-governance along with quality infrastructure, according to the government.

Under the programme, the Centre will spend Rs48,000 crore over five years. Each city will get Rs100 crore per year. A matching fund of Rs48,000 crore will have to be contributed by states from their internal resources or through market borrowing and through private sector.

The selection is based on the scores cities get for carrying out urban reforms in areas including sanitation and governance. Cities that score the highest will be picked for the project, to be implemented over a 10-year period.