Government Picks Another 30 Smart Cities, 10 More To Go

A man walks past reinforcing steel and concrete columns at the construction site of a wholesale market developed by Vishvaraj Infrastructure Ltd. in Nagpur, India. (Photographer: Dhiraj Singh/Bloomberg)

Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, Naya Raipur in Chhattisgarh and Rajkot in Gujarat feature among 30 smart cities announced on Friday that will eligible for funds for developing infrastructure.

These 30 cities will get a total investment of Rs 57,393 crore, Union urban development minister Venkaiah Naidu said. Of the 100 cities that the government plans to develop to improve living experience by 2022 under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's Smart City Mission, 90 have been selected so far.

"Forty-five cities contested for 40 available smart city slots but only 30 were selected to ensure feasible and workable plans that match the aspirations of the citizens," Naidu told reporters at a National Workshop on Urban Transformation.

The government will spend Rs 46,879 crore on core infrastructure and Rs 10,514 crore for technology-based solutions for improving governance, service delivery and utilization of infrastructure, he said. Total investment plan for the 90 cities is up to Rs 1.91 lakh crore, he said.

The 30 smart cities announced today are:

Thiruvananthapuram
Naya Raipur
Rajkot
Amravati
Patna
Karimnagar
Muzaffarpur
Puducherry
Gandhinagar
Srinagar
Sagar
Karnal
Satna
Bengaluru
Shimla
Dehradun
Tiruppur
Pimpri Chinchwad
Bilaspur
Pasighat
Jammu
Dahod
Tirunelveli
Thootukudi
Tiruchirapalli
Jhansi
Aizawl
Allahabad
Aligarh
Gangtok

Twenty cities will contest for the remaining 10 slots, told Naidu.

These cities are Itanagar, Biharsharif, Diu, Silvassa, Kavaratti, Navi Mumbai, Greater Mumbai, Amravati, Impal, Shillong, Dindigul, Erode, Bidhannagar, Durgapur and Haldia, Meerut, Rai Bareilly, Ghaziabad, Sharanpur and Rampur.

The government also launched the city livability index to measure to the quality of life in cities.

“It provides informal framework for cities to know where they stand today to ensure a decent quality of life. The exercise will be undertaken in 116 cities covering all smart cities, capital cities and cities with more than 1 million population,” Naidu said.

Data on 79 parameters and 15 categories related to social, economic and infrastructure conditions and their impact on life will be collected in six months for the index.