"We are in the process of identifying cities to be part of the Smart Cities project and the process will be completed in a month," urban development secretary Shankar Aggarwal said. He added all state capitals, union territories and satellite towns of all metros would make it to the list. Some more mid-size cities and hill towns would be brought under this scheme, he said.
The secretary said the scheme would be rolled out in the next six months. Earlier in the day, urban development minister Venkaiah Naidu had directed his ministry officials to complete all processes before the winter session. Sources said Naidu told officers that's since the new initiatives are close to being firmed up, now there is a need to set the time frames for their launch and implementation.
Aggarwal said they are considering all options to push the scheme including government providing viable gap funding (VGF) of different components of these smart cities. "There is a tremendous interest generated over the project and now every city wants to become part of the smart city scheme," he said. But government will set conditions such as putting all information in public domain, time bound service delivery, digitization etc for any city to qualify for this project.
On how the scheme would help rejuvenate hill towns, Aggarwal said, "All our existing hill stations were developed by Britishers and today places like Mussoorie are overcrowded. So, we are exploring the option of developing Smart Cities in these areas as greenfield projects while for the rest it will be brownfield project."
Smart Cities scheme entails facilities like continuous water supply, modern sewerage system, solid waste management and infrastructure development among other advanced facilities.
The total estimate of investment requirements for providing these these services is estimated to be around Rs 7.5 lakh crore over 20 years meaning annual requirement of Rs 35,000 crore.
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