The Central Government on Friday,19th January, added nine more cities from seven states to the Smart Cities List, taking the total tally of the list to 99. In 2015, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced the development of 100 ‘smart cities’ in the country by 2022, through the Smart Cities Mission.
Minister for Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri announced on Friday that Silvassa (Dadra and Nagar Haveli) has topped the list of winning cities in the fourth round of Smart City competition. The others in the list include Erode (Tamil Nadu), Diu (Daman & Diu), Bihar Sharif (Bihar), Bareilly (Uttar Pradesh), Itanagar (Arunachal Pradesh), Moradabad (Uttar Pradesh), Saharanpur (Uttar Pradesh) and Kavaratti (Lakshwadeep). The 100th proposed city, Shillong (Meghalaya), has been given more time to submit its proposal as it failed to make it in time, the Indian Express reported.
The nine cities have proposed an investment of Rs 12,824 crore (on 409 projects) of which Rs 10,639 crore would be on area-based development and Rs 2,185 crore in pan-city initiatives which would impact 35 lakh persons living in these areas.Hardeep Singh Puri, Minister for Housing And Urban Affairs
The mission was announced with an initial investment of Rs 500 crore per city and the transformation was supposed to come about with the help of Information And Communication Technology (ICT) for efficient management of things like water supply, sanitation, waste management etc. Its two components include pan-city development, whereby a particular ICT solution is applied to one or more aspects of city-wide infrastructure, and area-based development which looks at investment in infrastructure creation in a smaller area.
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