In a major milestone for the Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led central government, it has announced that the first 22 cities – including Agra, Varanasi, Pune, and more – under the Smart Cities Mission are expected to be ready by March 2023.
The Centre said that the new smart cities will pave way for a citizen-friendly and sustainable environment in these areas for the residents. The remaining 78 cities under the Smart Cities Mission will be completed in the next 3-4 months, according to the Union Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry.
The 22 cities which are set to be completed by next month under this mission are as follows - Bhopal, Indore, Agra, Varanasi, Bhubaneswar, Chennai, Coimbatore, Erode, Ranchi, Salem, Surat, Udaipur, Visakhapatnam, Ahmedabad, Kakinada, Pune, Vellore, Pimpri-Chinchwad, Madurai, Amaravati, Tiruchirappalli and Thanjavur.
An Urban Affairs Ministry official told PTI, “We will complete 22 smart cities by March as projects in these cities are in the final stages. In the next three-four months, we will be completing the project works of the remaining cities.”
What is Smart Cities Mission?
The Smart Cities Mission was launched by PM Narendra Modi in 2015 with an overall budget of over Rs 7.2 lakh crore. A total of 100 cities were selected under this program of the Centre in order to make them more citizen-friendly and sustainable.
The 100 cities that have been made a part of the Smart Cities Mission of the Centre were selected for redevelopment through four rounds of competition conducted between January 2016 and June 2018. Now, the redevelopment in several of these cities is complete.
According to the ministry, the mission's objective is to promote cities that provide core infrastructure and give its citizens a decent quality of life and a clean and sustainable environment, besides adopting "smart solutions" to various issues.
The Centre believes that the redevelopment and sustainability in these cities are set to have a rub-off effect on the cities and areas surrounding these ‘smart cities’. Some other cities which have been selected under the Smart Cities Mission are Delhi, Dehradun, Ranchi, Chandigarh, and Srinagar.
(With PTI inputs)
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