The much-awaited list of cities to be developed under the Modi Government’s flagship Smart City Project is now finally out. Out of 98 cities named on Thursday, 24 are capital cities, 24 others are business and industrial centres, 18 are of cultural and tourism importance, five are port cities, and three are education and health care hubs.
The names of the cities selected for the Rs48,000 crore Smart Cities Project were released by the Centre on Thursday pending a nomination each from Uttar Pradesh (UP) and Jammu & Kashmir.
lucknow, Varanasi, Agra, Bareilly, Aligarh, Jhansi, Sharanpur, Chennai, Greater Hyderabad, Greater Mumbai, Ahmedabad, Silvassa, Diu, NDMC area in Delhi, Kavaratti, Pasighat, Namchi, New Town near Kolkata, Bidhannagar, Durgapur, Haldia, Panaji, Dharamshala, Erode, Salem, Coimbatore, Madurai and Vellore are among the 98 cities that will be developed as smart cities under the Smart City Mission.
However, nine capital cities that could not be nominated for Smart City development are Patna, Itanagar, Mumbai, Shimla, Bengaluru, Daman, Thiruva-nanthapuram, Puducherry, Gangtok and Kohima. They were not nominated by their respective States.
“The Government of Jammu & Kashmir sought more time to firm up its choice. More information is sought from the UP Government about the 13th smart city that is yet to be announced,” Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said after releasing the list.
According to Urban Development Ministry officials, Jammu & Kashmir want both Jammu and Srinagar to be developed as a Smart City though the State has got only one slot in the project.
Both Meerut and Raebareli have got equal points for the 13th slot in the smart city challenge competition in UP so now the State has to decide whom it wants to nominate, the official added. “It is the States which have sent the names of the cities to be included in the project. Names of Patna and Bengaluru were not proposed by their respective States,” Naidu said.
At 13 UP has the maximum number of cities, followed by 12 from Tamil Nadu and 10 from Maharashtra that are to be developed as Smart Cities, Madhya Pradesh has seven cities in the project.
The total population of these proposed 98 Smart Cities is about 12 crore accounting for 35 per cent of the country’s total urban population as per the 2011 Census, Naidu said.
While Dehradun from Uttarakhand and Agartala from Tripura have been selected, Greater Hyderabad and Greater Warangal are from Telangana. ludhiana, Jalandhar and Amritsar have found place in the list from Punjab while Bhubaneswar and Rourkela from Odisha bagged the slots.
From Rajasthan besides Ajmer, pink city Jaipur along with Udaipur and Kota find place in the list. Gandhinagar, Ahmedabad, Surat and Rajkot are among six cities from Gujarat that got the nod.
Ranchi and Dharamshala will represent Jharkhand and Himachal respectively in the list.
Karnal and Faridabad from Haryana and Kochi from Kerala are in the coveted list released by the Centre. Biharsharif, Bhagalpur and Muzafarpur from Bihar while Visakhapatnam, Tirupati and Kakinada from Andhra have also found place in the list.
The next stage is choosing 20 cities in the first lot by the end of the year and the next two years 40 cities each will be selected for receiving Central funding of Rs 500 crore spread over the coming five years.