Even as Uttar Pradesh has been given the maximum share of 13 out of the 100 Smart cities under the Smart Cities Mission launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Delhi on Thursday, Chief Minister Akhilesh Yadav has said the State’s share should have been more.
Mr. Yadav made this observation a day before the formal launch of the Mission. Addressing a function at his 5, Kalidas Marg official residence, the Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister took a dig at the Smart Cities Mission of the Government of India when he said that “safai” (clean) cities should be developed along with the Smart cities.
Apparently, the Chief Minister was hinting towards the maximum number of 71 Bharatiya Janata Party MPs elected from Uttar Pradesh in 2014 Lok Sabha elections for suggesting that the State’s share of Smart cities should have been more. However, at the official level, the Urban Development Department of the State Government had sent a proposal to the Government of India for including 18 cities in the Smart cities scheme. The proposal was sent to the Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India a couple of months back, sources in the State Urban Development Department said.
According to sources, the 18 State cities included in the proposal are Lucknow, Kanpur, Varanasi, Allahabad, Agra, Bareilly, Meerut, Ghaziabad, Moradabad, Mathura, Jhansi, Aligarh, Muzaffarnagar, Saharanpur, Rampur, Gorakhpur, Faizabad and Ayodhya. Under the Smart Cities Mission, cities which qualified to be developed as Smart city would get a Central assistance of Rs. 500 crore over a period of five years with Rs. 100 crore to be given each year for the development of public and civic amenities and to plan their growth.
In fact, the ruling Samajwadi Party has maintained that the concept of Smart city is not new as the process of developing hi-tech townships or cities had been initiated in Uttar Pradesh by Mulayam Singh when he was the Chief Minister in 2003. More recently, the Samajwadi Party Government has formulated a proposal of developing three Smart, or ultra-modern hi-tech cities in Allahabad which will be known as Sangam City, the Trans-Ganga Pariyojana, or city, in Unnao district near Lucknow and one in Noida and Greater Noida, official sources said.
The foundation stone of the Trans-Ganga Pariyojana has already been laid by the Chief Minister.
The urban renewal plan in the State has been a non- starter with the situation largely unchanged, notwithstanding the official claims on paper. For the record, there are 14 Nagar Nigams, or cities with Municipal Corporations, 194 Nagar Palika Parishad and 427 Nagar Panchayat. As per the data available for 2013-14, the total number of public toilets in the 14 Nagar Nigams was 2076 and public urinals, 2083. Majority of these are in an utter state of neglect. Forty lakh metric tonne of garbage was generated in the 14 Municipal Corporations in 2013-14, out of which 39.00 mt tonne is shown to have been disposed off.
The 14 Nagar Nigams in the State are Lucknow, Kanpur, Agra, Allahabad, Varanasi, Gorakhpur, Jhansi, Aligarh, Ghaziabad, Meerut, Moradabad, Bareilly, Saharanpur and Firozabad.
