NEW DELHI: Urban development minister M Venkaiah Naidu has announced the first list of 20 cities to be developed as Smart Cities, with Bhubaneswar topping the list and Pune and Jaipur coming in second and third respectively.
The others on the list include Surat, Kochi and Ahmedabad.
These cities will be developed to have basic infrastructure through assured water and power supply, sanitation and solid waste management, efficient urban mobility and public transport, IT connectivity, e-governance and citizen participation.
“The states selected cities and sent us a list of 97 names. There was a competition among these names and 20 cities have been selected,” Naidu told a news conference. “Bottom up approach has been the key planning principle under Smart City Mission,” he said.
“The Smart City Challenge Competition was as rigorous and demanding as the civil services competition conducted,” Naidu quipped.
Here is the complete list of the cities: 1. Bhubaneswar, 2. Pune, 3. Jaipur, 4. Surat, 5. Kochi, 6.Ahmedabad, 7.Jabalpur, 8.Visakhapatnam, 9.Solapur,
10 Davanagere, 11. Indore, 12. New Delhi, 13. Coimbatore, 14. Kakinada, 15. Belgaum, 16. Udaipur, 17. Guwahati, 18. Chennai, 19. Ludhiana, 20. Bhopal
In the subsequent years, the government will announce 40 cities each to be developed as smart cities as per Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s plan to develop 100 smart cities in the country.
The government plans to build these smart cities by 2022 to help accommodate its swelling urban population, which is set to rise by more than 400 million people to 814 million by 2050.-PTI
