NEW DELHI: Pushing ahead with its
urban development goals, Prime Minister Narendra Modi-led NDA government will
announce the first batch of 20 smart cities early next month.
"Evaluation of smart city plans of 97 cities
in the second stage of 'City Challenge' competition is already in progress and
the results will be announced shortly marking a high point in promoting
competition among cities for resource allocation, the first of its kind,"
a Ministry of Urban Development press release said.
Both the urban ministries have selected cities for
allocation of central assistance based on objective criteria of total urban
population and number of statutory urban local bodies besides urban poor in
each state ending discretion and subjectivity, under new urban missions.
"Government has reset the parameters for urban
planning in the year 2015 and has approved an investment of about Rs 42,000
crore in 2015 for developing basic urban infrastructure and for affordable
housing alone. This includes Rs 19,170 crore for improving infrastructure
relating to water supply, sewerage networks, storm water drains, urban
transport and open spaces in 474 cities in 18 states under Atal Mission for
Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), launched in June this
year," the release said.
Under another flagship programme of Prime
Minister's Awas Yojana (Urban), an investment of over Rs 22,000 crore has been
approved in 2015 for construction of 4.25 lakh houses for Economically Weaker
Sections (EWS) in 227 cities in 11 states.
"In
pursuit of enabling urban areas as more effective engines of high rate of
economic growth besides making them more liveable, the government has put an
end to ad-hocism in urban planning and resource allocation under new urban
sector initiatives. Under AMRUT, a detailed infrastructure gap analysis has
been made mandatory for formulating Service Level Improvement Plans (SLIP) for
each of the mission cities for allocation of central assistance from out of the
five year kitty of Rs 50,000 crore. Unlike in the past, urban local bodies and
state governments have been empowered to appraise and approve projects with the
Ministry of Urban Development completely withdrawing from the same," the
release added. SOURCE: THE ECONOMIC TIMES
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