Varanasi makes it to smart city list as UP polls approach

Ahead of the Assembly elections in Uttar Pradesh, three cities in the state, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s constituency of Varanasi, have made it to the third smart city list. Other election-bound states including Punjab and Gujarat have also found entries on the list of 27 cities announced on Tuesday. With this, the Urban Development Ministry has selected 60 cities in three rounds. Only

nine states and Union territories (UTs), including Uttarakhand and Jammu & Kashmir, are yet to get a place on the ambitious list.  Earlier, 33 cities were announced in two batches. These include 13 that made it to the list through a fast-track process in July. According to  the Smart City Mission Guidelines, 40 cities were to be identified during the current financial year for commencing implementation of the scheme. To comply with that, 27 slots have been filled, said Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu. (SMART CHOICE)

Naidu said 63 cities fought for the 27 slots on the third list. Tourist and pilgrimage destinations such as Amritsar, Ujjain, Agra, Ajmer and Triupati have all been incorporated into the programme. Besides Amritsar, Jalandhar is the other city in Punjab that has made the cut. In UP, Agra and Kanpur are part of the smart city plan, besides Varanasi, which was at the bottom of the pecking order last year, when the long list of 100 cities was announced.

“Inclusion of cities like Agra, Amritsar, Ujjain will boost the tourism sector as well as bring up these cities on the global tourism map. The smart cities concept would lead to well-planned urbanisation with aesthetic beauty comparable to international standards,” said Parveen Jain, president of National Real Estate Development Council (Naredco).

In all, the government has incorporated five cities from Maharashtra, four each from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, three from Uttar Pradesh and two each from Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan and Punjab. One city each has made the cut from Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Gujarat, Sikkim and Nagaland.

Naidu said each of these cities will get Rs 200 crore in the first year and Rs 100 crore over the next three financial years to transform themselves. State governments and the respective urban local bodies will match the Centre’s contribution. The Union Cabinet had last year approved an investment of Rs 50,000 crore for smart cities.

According to the urban development ministry’s estimate, Rs 1.44 lakh crore of investment has been proposed by the 60 cities that have been selected so far.

The 27 cities announced on Tuesday have proposed a total investment of Rs 66,883 crore under the respective smart city plans, including Rs 42,524 crore in area-based development (79 per cent of total investment) and Rs 11,379 crore in technology-based pan-city solutions (21 per cent of total investment).

Eighty-two projects are already under implementation by the first batch of 20 smart cities and another 113  will take off soon, estimates suggest.

Naidu said in the next one year, one would get to see smart cities taking shape.

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