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Last week the Indian government announced a new list of 30 additional cities picked for development as smart cities. This takes the total number of Indian cities selected so far for development into smart cities to 90, under Prime Minister Modi’ s ongoing Smart City program.
Among the new cities selected are Thiruvanathapuram, capital of the Kerala state, Naya Raipur, capital of the Chhattisgarh state, and Jammu and Srinagar, the two capitals of the Jammu & Kashmir state. Interestingly, Mumbai and Bengal did not participate, so the final number of selected cities was lowered from the 40 initially envisaged. Urban Development minister Venkaiah Naidu mentioned that out of the 45 candidate cities only 30 were selected in order to ensure “feasible and workable plans that match the aspirations of the citizens’.
“Of the 30 cities announced on Friday, 26 have proposed affordable housing projects that benefit the urban poor, 26 cities will be taking up school and hospital projects, 29 will be taking up redesign and redevelopment of roads which again will benefit the common man.’
The selected cities will be the target of an investment of around $8.9 billion, bringing the total projected smart city investment for the 90 cities currently selected to $29 billion. All the smart cities selected will install Integrated Command and Control Centers that enable coordination among different agencies and offer better service delivery and the more efficient management of resources that are often scarce, such as power and water. According to minister Naidu, this demonstrates that the changes will not be merely cosmetic.
The previous Urenio Watch update on the progress of India’ s Smart City program can be found here.
The original article from the Economic Times can be found here.