Union Govt Includes Bengaluru in its Latest Smart City List

Bengaluru/New Delhi: Central government on Friday has announced another list of 30 cities for development as smart cities taking the total cities picked up so far to 90 under Smart City Mission launched on June 25, 2015. Karnataka state capital, Bengaluru has been included in the smart city mission as 14^th city in the list of 30 cities announced on Friday.  With the new announcement, infrastructure facilities in Bengaluru are expected to be developed further to make it clean, smart and developed in India.

Announcing the new batch of smart cities at a National Workshop on Urban Transformation here on June 23, Union Minister of Urban Development and Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation M Venkaiah Naidu said that 45 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 as directed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi while launching the mission.

Naidu informed that the 30 cities announced today proposed a total investment of Rs.57,393 cr under respective smart city plans. This includes Rs.46,879 cr for ensuring core infrastructure in the areas identified by citizens for area based development and Rs.10,514 cr for technology based solutions for improving governance , service delivery and utilization of infrastructure. With this the total investment approved under the smart city plans of 90 cities has gone up to Rs.1,91,155 cr.

The Minister said that 20 cities will be contesting for the remaining 10 slots under smart city mission. The list of the cities include; Itanagar (Arunachal Pradesh), Biharsharif (Bihar), Diu (Daman & Diu), Silvassa (Dadra and Nager Haveli), Kavaratti (Lakshadweep), Navimumbai, Greater Mumbai and Amaravati (Maharashtra), Imphal (Manipur), Shillong (Meghalaya), Dindigul and Erode(Tamil Nadu), Bidhannagar, Durgapur and Haldia (West Bengal), Meerut,Rai  Bareilly, Ghaziabad, Sharanpur and Rampur (UP). Naidu said selection of cities for smart city development is running ahead of schedule and the remaining cities would submit revised smart city plans for filling up the vacant slots.

Latest list of cities released by the minister to develop them as Smart Cities under Smart City Project