Meet future smart cities: Amritsar, Agra, Thane and more

Smart Cities Mission, which was launched in June 2015 with the aim of developing 100 smart cities, has announced the names of 27 new cities included in the second phase of the smart cities mission.

These names have been selected from 63 cities who participated in the third round of the competition and include names like Amritsar, Agra, Kanpur, Thane, Ajmer, Nagpur and Tirupati.

The 27 cities include five from Maharashtra, four each from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, three from Uttar Pradesh, two each from Punjab, Rajasthan, and Madhya Pradesh and one each from Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Gujarat, Nagaland, and Sikkim.

The other cities selected include Aurangabad, Gwalior, Hubli-Dharwad, Jalandhar, and Kohima. The cities selected on Tuesday have proposed a total investment of Rs 66,883 crore under their respective plans.

“This willingness and enthusiasm among the cities to participate in more than one round of competition is a clear evidence of the ‘urban renaissance’ set in motion under the new urban sector initiatives of the government,” minister for urban development, M. Venkaiah Naidu, said while announcing the names of the 27 new cities.

Smart Cities Mission is an urban renewal and retrofitting program by the Government of India with a mission to develop 100 cities all over the country making them citizen friendly and sustainable. The government of India under Prime Minister Narendra Modi has a vision of developing 100 smart cities as satellite towns of larger cities and by modernizing the existing mid-sized cities.

“A total investment of Rs 144,742 crore has been proposed by the 60 cities under their smart city plans,” Naidu said.

The process for selection of the remaining 40 cities will begin from January.

According to the guidelines of the mission, the government was to select 20 cities in the first phase and 40 in the next two years. However, in May this year, 13 more cities were included in the first phase to expand the representation of states in the mission.

The mission has been allotted a budget of Rs.48,000 crore for five years.