[CA] New Smart Cities

Senior Congress leader Sonia Gandhi’s constituency Rae Bareilly and Delhi’s next door neighbour Ghaziabad are among four cities from Uttar Pradesh that failed to make it to the final list of 100 smart cities under the NDA government’s flagship programme.

Union housing and urban affairs minister Hardeep Singh Puri announced a list of nine of the remaining smart cities. These are Bareilly, Moradabad, Saharanpur, Bihar Sharif, Silvassa, Erode, Daman & Diu, Itanagar and Kavaratti.

So far, 90 cities have been selected under the programme, launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in June 2015.

The Centre was set to announce the names of the final ten cities but one of them, Shillong, could not submit its proposal. The state government has been given two weeks time to submit its proposal failing which, another city will be selected for the programme.

The nine cities have proposed an investment of Rs. 12,824 crore. Meant to change the way urban India lives, smart cities will enjoy uninterrupted power and water supplies, internet connectivity, e-governance along with quality infrastructure, according to the government.

Under the programme, the Centre will spend Rs. 48,000 crore over five years. Each city will get Rs. 100 crore per year.

A matching fund of ₹48,000 crore will have to be contributed by states from their internal resources or through market borrowing and through private sector.

The selection is based on the scores cities get for carrying out urban reforms in areas including sanitation and governance. Cities that score the highest will be picked for the project, to be implemented over a 10-year period.

The number of cities that each state can select is based on a formula worked out by the urban development ministry that gives a 50:50 weightage to a state’s population and the number of statutory towns.

The nine cities were selected from among 15 cities.