The governments recent announcement of a lit regarding a project worth Rs.3 lac crore, transforming some Indian cities into smart city is making a lot of buzz. The smart city project was launched on 24th June 2015, by Prime Minister Narendra Modi along with announcement of criteria and guidelines for 100 cities. The remaining two names of the list released are yet to e announced. It is believed one from Jammu & Kashmir and 13th city from Uttar Pradesh will be named.
Smart City Concept
As per government, features of these smart cities will be area based development mixed with land use, housing, developing walkable localities, preserving open spaces, promoting various modes of transport, cost effective and citizen friendly governance and applying smart solutions to infrastructure and services.
In this project 20 cities will be selected in the first lot by the end of this year and 40 cities over next two year, each of the selected city would receiving central government funding of Rs.500 crore, spread over five years. However all the listed 98 cities would be given Rs.2 crore each, so that the allotted funds could be channelized in preparation of Smart City plan, said fund will be released in next couple of days.
The selection of first 20 cities will be based on broader criteria along with city vision and strategy, cost effectiveness, creditability of implementation and innovation. Those cities which are not selected in first round, can re-participate in round second and third by improving their respective plans.
In this project 12 crore people will be direct beneficiary. The population of these 98 cities constitute 35% of India’s total population, as per the data based on 2011 censes. However, nine capital cities including Patna, Itanagar, Shimla, Bangalore, Daman, Thiruvanathapuram, Puducherry, Gangtok and Kohima are not nominated in the smart city project. The experts believe that after selection of 20 cities, major challenge will be to provide quality urban services such as water supply, sanitation, drainage, solid waste management, sewerage treatment will be challenging.
Check out the full list here.
