Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Lok Sabha constituency Varanasi along with Amritsar, Kanpur, Thane and Agra are among the 27 urban centres, picked on Tuesday to be developed as smart cities, under the NDA government’s ambitious plan for an urban overhaul.
The three cities are Uttar Pradesh that goes to polls next year. While two other cities from poll bound Punjab — Amritsar and Ludhiana – also made it to the third list announced by Union urban development minister M Venkaiah Naidu on Tuesday. Shiromani Akali Dal, an NDA ally is in power in Punjab.
Through this, the government aims at transforming around 100 cities across India by 2019-20. In this financial year, the central government had planned to announce 40 cities out of which 13 were announced in May, earlier this year.
This is the third list announced by the government. These 27 cities competed with 63 others over three rounds, and qualified to fill the remaining vacancies as laid out by the Mission guidelines.
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.
“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.
The first list was annouced in January, when the government announced the 20 cities which will receive partial funding from the Centre for the Smart Cities project. So far, 60 cities have been enlisted by the government and the remaining will be announced by 2018. Each of the 40 cities announced in this financial year will receive 200 crores for this year and 100 crores over the next three years. The state government and urban authorities will match the centre’s contribution.
