Four more cities from state on smart list

The Union Urban Development Ministry on Tuesday announced another set of 27 cities to be developed as smart cities, including four from Karnataka – Hubballi-Dharwad, Mangaluru, Shivamogga and Tumakuru.

The number of cities in the state to be developed under the Centrally sponsored Smart Cities Mission now stands at six. Davangere and Belagavi were selected under the scheme in January.

The 27 cities announced by Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu include Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi and popular pilgrim and tourism destinations Amritsar, Ujjain, Tirupati, Agra, Nashik, Madurai, Thanjavur and Ajmer. These new batch of smart cities are from 12 states – five from Maharashtra, four each from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, three from Uttar Pradesh, two each from Punjab, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, and one each from Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Gujarat, Nagaland and Sikkim.

Under the Smart Cities Mission, the Urban Development Ministry provides Rs 500 crore for each city over five years with the respective states making a matching contribution. The rest of the resources will come from loans, public-private partnerships, convergence of various schemes of the Central and state governments, besides the own resources of the urban local bodies.

The Urban Development Ministry has tied up with multilateral lending agencies DFID of the United Kingdom and JICA who have committed $500 million each. Similarly, the ADB and the World Bank have committed $1 billion. The New Development Bank (BRICS Bank) has proposed to provide finance for projects up to $500 million per city, said the minister.

India plans to have 100 such cities by 2022. With the announcement of the third list, the total number of cities selected under the Smart Cities Mission is 60. Earlier, the Urban Development Ministry had announced the list of 33 cities in two batches (20 in January and 13 in May). Another 40 cities will be selected in January next year, Naidu said.

He said the 27 cities on the third list had proposed an investment of Rs 66,883 crore, including Rs 42,524 crore under area-based development and another Rs 11,379 crore for technology-based pan-city solutions that benefit all the citizens of the respective cities.

The total investment proposed by the 60 cities selected so far is Rs 1,44,742 crore.Claiming that the execution of projects under the Mission was running ahead of schedule, he said so far 82 different projects had been implemented.