Manish Kumar
Post News Network
New Delhi, Sept 20: The urban development ministry Tuesday selected Rourkela among 27 Indian cities for the smart city mission. The announcement was made here by Union urban development minister Venkaiah Naidu.
This is in addition to the first list of 20 smart cities and the second list of 13 cities chosen under the mission. According to the minister, plans and proposals from the urban local bodies of 63 cities were considered for the third list and based on their merits, 27 cities were finalised.
Besides one city from Orissa, the list also comprised names from 12 states which included five cities from Maharashtra, four each from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, three from UP, two each from Punjab, Rajasthan and MP and one each from Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat, Nagaland and Sikkim.
“Smart city plan is running ahead of schedule. Sixty of the 100 smart cities are on the course of implementation, 82 projects are already under implementation by the first batch of 20 smart cities and another 113 projects will soon take off the ground. In the next one year, one will get to see the smart cities taking shape,” Naidu said. The ministry claims that with today’s announcement, a total investment of `1,44,742 crore had been proposed by the 60 declared smart cities under the mission.
Moreover, the third list of cities alone has proposed a total investment of `66,883 crore under the smart city mission. This includes `42,524 crore in area based development (79% of the total investment) and `11,379 crore in technology based pan-city solutions (21% of the total investments).
In terms of ranking on these declared smart cities, Rourkela was ranked 12thamong the 27. The top five cities named Tuesday by the ministry are Amritsar, Kalyan (Mumbai), Ujjain, Tirupati and Nagpur.
