EMN
Dimapur, September 4
The Ministry of Urban Development has on Friday sanctioned Rs. 194 crore –Rs.2 crore each to the 96 cities selected–for the Smart City Mission. Further set of funds will be sanctioned soon to the 98 smart city candidates, including Nagaland and the Union Territories of Delhi and Chandigarh. Nagaland’s capital town Kohima is one of the 98 towns selected for the mission. Orders sanctioning the funds were issued by Union Minister for Urban Development M Venakaiah Naidu to 38 smart city representatives from 11 states, including the northeastern states, who attended a regional workshop here on Friday in New Delhi.
The Smart City Regional Workshop in New Delhi for northern states and Gujarat was conducted on September 4 in New Delhi to discuss various aspects of preparation of Smart City Plans and related issues.
Venkaiah Naidu addressed the Delhi workshop for northern states and Gujarat.
Mayors, municipal chairpersons and municipal commissioners from cities included in Smart City Mission and principal secretaries of Urban Development departments from the states besides representatives of domestic and global technical agencies and consultants and multi-lateral lending agencies attended the workshop.
Later in the day, funds were transferred electronically to the respective states and union territories.
The Rs.2 crore provided to each selected city is meant for preparation of city level Smart City Plans with the assistance of technical and holding agencies.
In his address marking the event, Minister of Urban Development M Venkaiah Naidu said that a ‘Smart City is what the citizens want their city to be and the city level plans should be evolved based on extensive consultations with them.
Smart City Plans will be evaluated in the second stage of City Challenge competition based on such consultations and their economic and environmental impacts.”
In his address, Naidu urged the elected representatives and officials of the cities to “leave behind the jubilation” and begin ‘facing the tough challenge of making them smart, for which the clock has begun to tick.’
He expressed confidence that the urban landscape of the country would be recast to make urban areas ‘more livable and more effective engines of economic growth’.
The Urban Development Minister said that a paradigm shift had come to enable the success of new urban development initiative based on “the learning of the past, including the implementation of JNNURM.”
Elaborating what he called the ‘essential features of this new approach’, Naidu said they were, ‘Bottom-up planning based on citizen participation, complete autonomy to states and UTs in project proposal, appraisal and approval, selection of cities and towns under new urban missions based on objective criteria, convergence of different schemes to enable integrated planning and better utilization of resources for visible impact on ground and unprecedented resource support to states and urban local bodies.’
Naidu also informed that as against central assistance of only Rs.36,000 crore sanctioned by the ten-year long JNNURM, the central government has committed to spending over Rs.3.00 lakh crore on urban development during the next five to six years.
Transfer of divisible revenues to the states has been increased by a whopping 10% besides enhanced assistance of Rs.64, 032 crore to urban local bodies over the next five years, he said.
To the policymakers, technocrats and municipal leaders, Naidu said, “You have it in you to rise to the challenge of making these cities smart if you so desire and act accordingly.
All that is needed is change of mindset and commitment to live up to people’s expectations and the desire to be remembered for what you have done instead of worrying about the next elections.”
Also speaking during the event was Madhusudhan Prasad, secretary for Urban Development.
He said that the Smart City Mission was based on selection while the Ata Mission (for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation program) was by entitlement.
He stressed that “Smart City Mission is not a mere urban infrastructure upgradation (sic) mission.”
“It is area based and intended to benefit all the citizens of an urban areas in one form or the other.
For the success of smart city mission, one has to think out of the box and act accordingly,” Prasad said.
Under AMRUT, all towns and cities with a population of more than one lakh each are included in the mission for ensuring basic infrastructure to improve service levels by targeting individual households.
Under the Smart City Mission, selection of cities is based on competition and area-based implementation strategies.
