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The Ministry of Urban Development has received only 17 smart city proposals from seven states and union territory Puducherry a day before the December 15 deadline.
These cities are Jaipur, Udaipur, Ajmer and Kota (Rajasthan), Jalandhar, Ludhiana (Punjab), Ranchi (Jharkhand), New Town Kolkata, Bidhannagar and Durgapur (West Bengal), Kochi (Kerala), Davanagere, Tumakuru, Hubli-Dharwad and Shivmogga (Karnataka), Bihar Sharif (Bihar) and Oulgaret (Puducherry), an official statement said.
Rajasthan, the first to submit proposals, has proposed a total investment of ₹6,457 crore over the next five years. While a greenfield city is proposed near Kota, other three cities namely Ajmer, Jaipur, Udaipur will undertake retrofitting based area based smart city development schemes.
Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu tweeted on Monday: “Excited over states submitting smart city proposals to Urban Development Ministry today and tomorrow. These are the fruits of more than one year hard work by Ministry, States and Urban Local Bodies. Happy that a new vision begins to unfold.”
December 15 is the last date for submission of proposals to the Ministry of Urban Development and it is learnt that 86 proposals out of the total 98 will be received within the stipulated time.
“Only in case of Tamil Nadu, the High Powered Steering Committee meeting could not be scheduled on account of severe flooding in Chennai due to heavy rains. Hence, these proposals may take time,” a senior official from the Ministry said.
On the receipt of all proposals, the second stage of ‘City Challenge Competition’ will begin. Three teams will judge each city proposal separately. Each team will include an urban planning expert and an economic expert with knowledge of resource mobilisation and management. The average of marks given by the three teams separately will be used for ranking top 20 cities.
Proposals will be judged by the Centre on credibility of implementation, city vision and strategy, economic and environmental impacts, cost effectiveness, innovation and scalability and processes followed, including citizen implementation.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi is likely to announce 20 winners of the Government’s flagship ‘smart cities mission’ before the occasion of Republic Day next month.
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