Temple city Bhubaneswar has topped the list of 20 cities declared by the Centre under its Smart Cities Mission project on Thursday.
The cities chosen are Bhubaneswar, Pune, Jaipur, Surat, Kochi, Ahmedabad, Jabalpur, Visakhapatnam, Solapur, Davangere, Indore, New Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) area, Coimbatore, Kakinada, Belgaum, Udaipur, Guwahati, Chennai, ludhiana and Bhopal.
The vision for Smart Cities includes quality communications systems including Wi-Fi and infrastructure facilities like drinking water on tap, automated waste collection and uninterrupted power supply, all luxuries for most cities.
These 20 cities will be the first to receive funds, thus kick-starting the process of developing them into Smart Cities. The next two years will see inclusion of 40 and 38 cities, respectively. The Centre will provide Rs200 crore in the first year to each of the 20 chosen cities and Rs100 crore every subsequent year.
Announcing the names of the cities, Union Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu said, “We introduced competition to pick the best candidates. The competition was as rigorous as the civil services exam.”
Naidu clarified that none of the cities are from big States Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal. On the other hand, some States have two or more - Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Karnataka, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh.
The Government has denied any role in the selection. “Nothing was decided in Delhi; nothing was dictated in Delhi,” the Minister asserted.
To qualify, States and local administrations had to provide “smart answers” to a template with 43 questions. Factors like people’s participation also carried weight.
In December last year, 97 selected cities had submitted their plans to the Ministry and were given Rs2 crore each to prepare plans along with technical agencies and other organisations.