27 more make the cut for Smart City

September 20, 2016

Smart cities to take shape in one year

Twenty seven more cities from 12 states have joined the list of smart cities in the third round, including five from Maharashtra. These 27 cities will need an investment of close to Rs 67,000 crore. With this new inclusion, 60 cities have now been selected by the urban development ministry in three rounds that covered 27 states and union territories (UT). Only nine more states and UTs are still to get on board, including Uttarakhand and Jammu & Kashmir.

Maharashtra has bagged five cities – the maximum number in this round – and which includes Thane, Nashik, Nagpur, Kalyan-Dombivali and Aurangabad.
Poll-bound Uttar Pradesh has three cities on the list including Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s constituency of Varanasi. The other two cities are Kanpur and Agra. Four cities each from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka have also made it to this third list, followed by three from UP and two each from Punjab and Rajasthan. One city each from Madhya Pradesh, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Gujarat, Sikkim and Nagaland were also selected in this round.

Sikkim and Nagaland are the latest entrants from north-east India to enter the government’s Smart City mission. According to the urban development ministry, an investment of Rs 1.44 lakh crore has been proposed for the 60 smart cities announced so far, under the smart city plan. Around 82 projects are under implementation from the first batch of 20 smart cities while implementation for 113 projects are expected to start soon. The ministry said smart cities will be seen taking shape in the next year or so.