The Government on Friday announced that another 30 cites will be developed as smart cities taking the total number of cities identified under Smart City Mission launched in June 2015 to 90.
Announcing the new batch of smart cities, the Minister for Urban Development and Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation, M Venkaiah Naidu, said that 45 cities contested for 40 available smart city slots but only 30 were selected to ensure feasible and workable plans.
He said: "Of the 30 cities announced today, 26 of them have proposed affordable housing projects that benefit the urban poor, 26 cities will be taking up school and hospital projects, 29 will be taking up redesign and redevelopment of roads."
Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala has topped the list in this round of selection of smart cities. Next is Naya Raipur in Chhattisgarh followed by Rajkot in Gujarat. Patna and Muzaffarpur in Bihar too have been selected in this list.
Venkaiah Naidu said that the 30 cities announced today proposed a total investment of ₹57,393 crore under respective smart city plans. This includes ₹46,879 crore for ensuring core infrastructure in the areas identified by citizens for area-based development and ₹10,514 crore for technology-based solutions for improving governance, service delivery and utilisation of infrastructure.
With this the total investment approved under the smart city plans of 90 cities has gone up to ₹1,91,155 crore.
The Minister said that 20 cities will be contesting for the remaining 10 slots under smart city mission. These are; Itanagar (Arunachal Pradesh), Biharsharif (Bihar), Diu (Daman & Diu), Silvassa (Dadra and Nager Haveli), Kavaratti (Lakshadweep), Navi Mumbai, Greater Mumbai and Amaravati (Maharashtra), Imphal (Manipur), Shillong (Meghalaya), Dindigul and Erode(Tamil Nadu), Bidhannagar, Durgapur and Haldia (West Bengal), Meerut, Rai Bareilly, Ghaziabad, Sharanpur and Rampur (UP).
