indo-asian news service
New Delhi, Jan 27: India and the US Tuesday decided to take “quick measures” for development of Visakhapatnam, Allahabad and Ajmer as smart cities.
Issues relating to development of these cities as smart ones were discussed in detail at a meeting held here between Urban Development Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu and US Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker, an official statement said here.
They decided to form a task force for each of the three cities to formulate concrete action plans in the next three months. Each Team will consist of three representatives each from the central and respective state governments and the US Trade and Development Agency (USTDA). Each city task force will discuss city specific features, project requirements and appropriate revenue models for enabling flow of investments, before suggesting action plans for developing them as smart cities, it said.
“This meeting was in pursuance of the directive of President Barack Obama to work on the economic dimension of strategic and commercial dialogue between Prime Minister (Narendra) Modi and President Obama and the decisions taken,” Pritzker said. Naidu, referring to the Modi-Obama joint statement of September last year and the signing of the MoUs on smart city cooperation, said it was now time for both the sides to “walk the talk by acting quick and concretising the agreements reached”.
“The joint statement and the MoUs have raised high hopes about smart cities becoming a reality. President Obama’s (just concluded) visit to India has even furthered these expectations and action is the need of the hour,” he said.
Talking about her earlier meetings in connection with the issue of developing smart cities with Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N. Chandrababu Naidu and Rajasthan Chief Minister Vasundhara Raje Scindia, Pritzker said that she found them to be “go getters” and was “confident of making a success of smart city cooperation between the US and India”.
