Prime Minister Narendra Modi's ambitious project to build 100 smart cities is fast catching the fancy of States and they are rushing to get a bigger slice of the smart city pie.
The Union Ministry of Urban Development held the first round of talks on Friday to take the States on board regarding the contours and concept of smart cities as envisaged under its draft note prepared for Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pet project. The response from the States was overwhelming.
Speaking at the conclave, Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu expressed happiness at the eagerness of the State Governments to be part of the project. "I have received numerous requests for specific cities to be included amongst those to be developed as smart cities. We recognise that urban development is primarily a State subject and the Central Government should appropriately play a supporting role," he added.
Though the list of cities to be developed is yet to be finalised, the National Capital Region may be the first off the blocks. Gurgaon, Sonepat, Noida, Ghaziabad and Faridabad are expected to be in the first batch of 35 satellite cities to be converted into smart cities, sources said.
The Akhilesh Yadav-led Uttar Pradesh Government proposed the name of as many as 20 cities to be developed as smart, urban settlements offering best of services to the residents. The list includes lucknow, Kanpur, Agra, Ghaziabad, Greater
Noida, Yamuna Expressway area and of course the Prime Minister's much-talked
about parliamentary constituency Varanasi.
While terming the concept of smart cities as a 'lovely announcement', Abhishek Mishra, a Minister in the Akhilesh Yadav Cabinet, said the States and Centre have to work together to make this happen.
"Integration of services and resource management will remain a major challenge. To begin with, we will start with cities that have a smaller population. The concept will generate revenue as well as employment opportunities," he added.
Jharkhand UD Secretary Ajay Kumar Singh said that they were keen to develop Ranchi, Dhanbad, Bokaro, Jamshedpur and Deoghar as advanced cities. "We want Deoghar to be developed under the category of religious cities as envisaged under the draft concept note."
However, he was quick to add that it was just a tentative list and the final list would be prepared after detailed discussion with Central Government officials.
While Himachal Pradesh wants Shimla to be developed as a smart city, Uttarakhand has proposed Haridwar, Rishikesh, Kedarnath, Dehradun, Nainital, Gairsain and Mussoorie as potential advanced urban settlements.
"We are looking to develop Haridwar and Rishikesh as a religious corridor. Gairsain can be developed as the new Capital city of Uttarakhand. We have also moved forward a proposal seeking special status for Kedarnath, which is still struggling to cope with the impact of the flood that washed away the region last year," said Navneet Pandey, Additional Secretary, Urban Development, of the State.
Mona Khandhar, Secretary (Housing) from Gujarat said they have already started working on two cities, Gujarat International Finance Tec-City ltd (GIFT) and Dholera.
While the Centre recently took up the GIFT City project as a benchmark to develop 100 smart cities in the country, the official said that a part of the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC), the industrial city of Dholera, will also become a 'smart city' by converging next generation technologies across infrastructure sectors. Khandhar said that her department has submitted a list of ten other cities to be developed as
smart urban settlements to the State Government.
However, it is a piquant situation for north-eastern States as none of their major cities have a population of one million, the benchmark proposed in the concept paper. They want their Capitals to be developed as smart cities.
For instance, Arunachal Pradesh and Manipur have proposed to develop their Capital Itanagar and Imphal respectively as smart cities. "Since we don't have any other major city we have proposed that Itanagar be developed as a smart city," said Pema Khandu, Urban Development Minister of Arunachal Pradesh.
Debashis Sen, Principal Secretary (UD Department) from West Bengal said they have selected ten cities which have the potential of becoming smart cities. These are New Town in North and South 24 Parganas district, Bolpur in Birbhum district, Durgapur in Burdwan district, Kalyani, Baruipur, Jaigaon, Raghunathpur in Purulia, Gangasagar and Debgram-Phulbari at Jalpaiguri district.
"We are already in the process of developing New Town Kolkata as a smart green city which will match the Centre's ambitious project," Sen added.
However, Punjab did not seem to be in a hurry to identify the list, as UD Secretary Ashok Gupta put it: "The smart city concept is based on a certain formula and we will submit the list only when the Centre asks us to do it formally."
There were some who expressed apprehensions about the efficacy of the project. For instance, an official from Karnataka said that resource mobilization and capacity building at the State and municipality level will remain a major issue. He also said it would not be easy to provide 24x7 power and water supply, given the shortage of these basic facilities across the country.
Samrat Chaudhary, UD Minister from Bihar, was equally critical of the project saying that such cities will not be an easy affair. "In Bihar, we are emphasizing on engineering procurement projects and there is almost no Private Public Partnership (PPP) mode as envisaged under the smart city projects," he added.
As per the definition of the Centre's concept paper, citizens of the 100 high-tech cities will enjoy uninterrupted power and water supply, online delivery of all public services, a stronger public transport system and much more. The private sector and PPP will play a big role while the Ministry would remain the central nodal agency.