Thirty more cities from across the country have been added to the Centre’s Smart Cities Mission, with a proposed investment of Rs.57,393 crore in various projects under the scheme.
Marking the second anniversary of the launch of the Smart Cities Mission, Union Urban Development Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu on Friday announced the new cities added to the scheme in the third round, taking the total number of cities to 90. With the addition of the 30 cities, 23 States and four Union Territories have been included in the Mission.
As in the previous two rounds, the cities were picked on the basis of the proposals they submitted for the Smart Cities Challenge. Among the cities selected, Mr. Naidu said, Kerala’s capital, Thiruvananthapuram, topped the challenge.
Tamil Nadu emerged as the State with the highest number of cities selected in this round, with Tirupur, Tirunelveli, Thootukudi and Tiruchirappalli making it to the Mission.
Uttar Pradesh and Gujarat had three cities each selected for the Mission. While Jhansi, Allahabad and Aligarh made it from U.P., Rakjot, Gandhinagar and Dahod were the picks from Gujarat.
Further, Madhya Pradesh (Sagar and Satna), Bihar (Patna and Muzaffarpur), Chhattisgarh (Naya Raipur and Bilaspur) and Jammu and Kashmir (Srinagar and Jammu) had two cities each selected. Andhra Pradesh’s new capital, Amaravati, was also selected, as was Karimnagar in neighbouring Telangana.
Among the 11 State capitals selected were Bengaluru in Karnataka, Shimla in Himachal Pradesh, Aizawl in Mizoram and Gangtok in Sikkim. The other cities selected were Puducherry, Karnal in Haryana, Dehradun in Uttarakhand, Pimpri Chinchwad in Maharashtra, and Pasighat in Arunachal Pradesh.
Mr. Naidu said that the proposed investment in these 30 cities was Rs.57,393 crore under various smart city plans. With that, the total investment for smart infrastructure development for the 90 cities had gone up to Rs.1.91 lakh crore, he added.
Govt. to assess quality of life in 116 cities
The Union Urban Development Ministry on Friday launched the City Liveability Index, an initiative to rank 116 cities across the country in terms of the quality of life they offer residents.
The cities to be ranked would include the ones selected for the Smart Cities Mission, State capitals, and those with a population of over 10 lakh.
Releasing the Liveability Standards at a workshop organised by the Ministry in Delhi, Urban Development Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu said that Indian cities had started improving infrastructure in the past two years under the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), the Smart Cities Mission, and the Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana (Urban). “The time has now come to measure the quality of life in cities and rank them accordingly.”
The cities would be assessed on 79 parameters such as governance, identity and culture, education, health, water supply, and reduced pollution.
