The Modi Government’s ambitious Smart City Mission is floundering and out of Rs 9,860 crore released to 60 cities under the mission, only seven per cent have been utilised so far. The Prime Minister’s Office is understood to be worried over slow pace of work under the mission, and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has himself decided to review the projects on June 25.
“Before the review meeting, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs will organise Smart Cities’ conclave in Bhopal from May 8-9 on best practices adopted by the cities under the Smart City programme. A list of practices would be put up before the Prime Minister during the review meeting,” said the sources. “The review meeting will also help address the bottleneck and speed up the projects,” sources added.
The cities selected under the Smart City Mission has been asked to prepare a list of best practices/smart practices adopted by them.
As per data provided by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs to a Parliamentary panel, so far only Rs 645 crore has been spent on the mission by the States. Of Rs 196 crore released to each of 40 cities, Ahmedabad has spent the maximum amount of Rs 80.15 crore, followed by Indore (Rs 70.69 crore), Surat (Rs 43.41 crore) and Bhopal Rs 42.86 crore. On the other hand, the data revealed that of the sanctioned funds, Andaman & Nicobar could utilise just Rs 54 lakh, Ranchi Rs 35 lakh, and Aurangabad Rs 85 lakh.
Among the cities, which got around Rs 111 crore each from the Centre, Vodadara has spent Rs 20.62 crore, Namchi in Sikkim spent Rs 6.80 crore, while Salem, Vellore and Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu could utilise only Rs 5 lakh, Rs 6 lakh and Rs 19 lakh, respectively.
The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Urban Development has expressed unhappiness over the slow pace of implementation of the mission. The panel has also pointed out that the “ground reality of work done under Smart Cities Mission is different than claimed by the Government with issues such as shortage of town planners with Urban local Bodies and complaints about poor work from local MPs putting a question mark on its implementation.
It has expressed its concern about the mission achieving its set targets when even after three years since its launch, most of the identified projects are still at the stage of preparation of detailed project report.
A Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry official said the Ministry was concerned about the “unsatisfactory” progress of the project in some of the cities.
Ninety-nine cities have so far been selected by the Government under the Smart City Mission and each of them will get Rs 500 crore as Central assistance for implementing various projects. Of the 99 cities selected for the Mission that have identified Rs 2.04 lakh crore worth projects, 86 have got Special Purpose Vehicles in place and 64 have Project Monitoring Cells.