Raipur and Bilaspur cities which had been included in the National Smart City Mission will soon have to buckle up for the Stage-II of City Challenge competition which would be held to identify the top scoring 20 cities in order to receive funding from the Centre during the current financial year.
“All the 100 city-level plans will be evaluated based on a set of elaborate criteria by the Union Urban Development Ministry,” officials stated.
Each of these cities has been given `2 crore for preparation of city level Smart City plans in the next three months by the Ministry.
The 20 cities have been nominated by the respective State Governments after the first round of competition, further to evaluation of all urban local bodies in each State as per a set of criteria including the existing service levels, institutional and financial capacities and past track record in implementation of JNNURM projects and reforms undertaken.
As a part of the ongoing stakeholder consultations for effective implementation of the Smart City Mission in the country, Union Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu will interact with Mayors, Municipal Chairpersons and Commissioners of 20 cities included in the Mission from 13 Eastern and North-Eastern states and Chattisgarh and Jharkhand at a Workshop in New Town Kolkata on September 12, 2015.
The 20 cities included in the Smart City Mission from 13 states include New Town Kolkata, Bidhanpur, Durgapur and Haldia from West Bengal, Muzaffarpur, Bhagalpur and Biharshariff from Bihar, Bhubaneswar and Rourkela from Odisha, Raipur and Bilaspur from Chattisgarh, Ranchi from Jharkhand, Namchi in Sikkim and the North-Eastern cities of Guwahati, Pasighat(Arunachal Pradesh), Imphal, Shillong, Aizawl, Kohima and Agartala.
The Regional Workshop on Smart Cities will also be attended by Principal Secretaries of Urban Development and other senior officials from these states.
Union Minister of State for Urban Development Babul Supriyo will also participate in the Workshop.
Naidu will broadly outline the challenges to be addressed for building smart cities including the need of looking forward and visionary leadership by both the elected and executive heads of the cities, need for urban governance reforms and an enabling environment for mobilization of resources required for Smart City Mission including through Public-Private-Partnership model.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has launched the Smart City Mission on June 25 this year. The Central Government has made a provision of `48,000 crore for five years for supporting the Smart City Mission through central assistance of `100 crore per city per year.
On January 16 this year, Union Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu while addressing Consultative Workshop on Urban Governance organised for Municipal Commissioners of 130 cities and towns from nine northern states of Delhi, Haryana, Chandigarh, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir, Uttarakhand, Uttar Pradesh and Rajasthan in New Delhi had stated that it will not be business as usual in the matter of financing of cities and towns under new urban initiatives and instead, it will be based on the ability of urban local bodies to reform urban governance and rise to the new challenges.
Naidu referred to the present appalling state of affairs in urban areas which is marked by weak urban governance structures, uninspiring leadership at the level of both selected and elected urban managers, poor inventory management and resource base, weak urban planning and execution, urban mobility being a nightmarish experience, housing shortage, inadequate water and power supply and despicable management of solid waste and treatment of sewerage etc.
In terms of service parameters, Naidu noted that only 73 litres of water per capita per day is being supplied as against the norm of 135 litres, only 50 per cent of households having water connection, 40 per cent families with toilet facilities, treatment of only 16% of sewerage, collection and disposal of only 23 per cent of solid waste and recycling only 10 per cent of city waste.