Four State capitals, Jaipur, Chennai, Bhopal and Bhubaneswar feature among the first 20 winners of a nationwide competition for Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet ‘Smart City Mission’.
Bhubaneswar tops the list of the first batch of the smart cities which was announced by Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu at a Press conference here on Thursday.
The other cities to be developed as ‘Smart Cities’ as part of the project are Delhi’s NDMC area, Pune, Surat, Kochi, Jabalpur, Visakhapatnam, Solapur, Davangere, Indore, Coimbatore, Kakinada, Belgaum, Udaipur, Guwahati, ludhiana and Bhopal.
None of the cities are from Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal, while some States
such as Madhya Pradesh,
Rajasthan, Karnataka, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh have two or more nominees.
These 20 cities, which were selected after a rigorous competition that the Urban Development Minister likened to the civil services exams, will be developed to have basic infrastructure through assured water and power supply, sanitation and solid waste management, efficient urban mobility, public transport, IT connectivity, e-governance and citizen participation.
A total investment of Rs 50,802 crore has been proposed for these cities and towns during a five-year period. Of this, Rs 38,693 crore will be spent on area development and Rs 12,109 crore on a total of 56 pan-city solutions, Naidu said.
For the selection of 20 cities, the broad criteria were the city’s vision and strategy, cost-effectiveness, credibility of implementation and innovation. In terms of population, these 20 cities account for 3.54 crore people with the city-wise population ranging from 2.58 lakh (New Delhi Municipal Council) to 55.78 lakh (Ahmedabad).
“To live up to the attendant challenges and deliver the desired outcomes, there was an imperative need to pick up cities and towns that can face these tough challenges. So, we introduced an element of competition to pick up the best candidates.
“The City Challenge Competition was as rigorous and demanding as the civil services competition conducted by the Union Public Service Commission every year to pick up the best of the lot,” the Minister said while asserting that the Centre had no role in the selection.
“Nothing was decided in New Delhi, nothing was dictated in New Delhi,” he said. The plans have been prepared by the urban local bodies and the States.
To qualify, States and local administrations had to provide “smart answers” to a template with 43 questions. Factors like people participation also carried weight, the Minister added.
“I am happy to inform you that a total of 15.20 million (1.52 crore) citizens have participated in the preparation of smart city plans at various stages, right from evolving vision for cities to final comments on draft plans. The whole competition was conducted in an objective and transparent manner. The bottom-up approach has been the key planning principle under the Smart City Mission,” he said.
The cities not named on Thursday will be asked to get their act together, focus on deficiencies and prepare for Round 2 of announcements by April 15.
In the subsequent years, the Government will announce 40 cities each to be developed as Smart Cities, Naidu added.
The ambitious project was announced by Modi last year envisaging selection of 100 Smart Cities to be selected through city challenge competition. The smart cities are supposed to be ready by 2022.
In December last year, 97 selected cities had submitted their plans to the Urban Development Ministry and were given Rs 2 crore each to prepare plans along with technical agencies and other organizations.