New Delhi : The meeting of the Consultative Committee of Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs was held today in the Parliament House Annexe, New Delhi. The Agenda item of the meeting was “Smart Cities Mission”. Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs, Shri HardeepPuri chaired the meeting.
Briefing about the Smart Cities Mission, Shri Puri said that the main objective of the Mission, launched on 25th June, 2021, is to promote cities that provide core infrastructure, clean and sustainable environment and give a decent quality of life to their citizens through the application of ‘Smart Solutions”. The Mission aims to drive economic growth and improve the quality of life through comprehensive work on social, economic, physical and institutional pillars of the city. 100 cities have been selected to be developed as smart cities through a two-stage National competition.
Smart Cities Mission is a centrally sponsoredscheme under which the Central Government will provide financial support to the extent of ₹48000 crores over 5 years i.e. on anaverage ₹100 crores per city per year and an equal amount of matching basis is to be provided by the State/ULB. Emphasis has been given on the participation of private sector through public private partnerships. Aggregating at national level, these proposals contained more than 5000 projects worth over ₹2,00,000 crores. Mission has a two-pronged strategy consisting of Pan-city and Area-Based development project. Implementation at the city level is being done by Special Purpose Vehicle(SPV) created for the purpose. There is no template or universally accepted definition of the Smart City. Therefore conceptualization of Smart City depends on the level of development,willingness to change and reform resources and aspirations of the city residents.
The overall progress of the Mission as on 12 November, 2021 shows great momentum in execution. Over 6452 projects worth ₹184,998 crores have been tendered. Of this, work orders have been issued for close to 5809 projects worth ₹156571 crores of which 3131 projects worth around ₹53,175
crore have been completed. Since the launch of the Mission, a total of ₹. 27,234 crores have been released by the Government of India to 100 cities under the Mission. The progress of the Mission inthese cities is done on a regular basis by State level High Powered Steering Committee.
The Mission has launched several initiatives that will not only ensure integrated development across variousaspects of urban development but also help lay long-term foundationfor good quality urbanization in the country. Some of the initiatives are:
- Ease of the Living Index
- Municipal Performance Index
- City GDP Framework
- Climate Smart Cities Assessment Framework
- Data Maturity Assessment Framework
- ICCC Maturity Assessment Framework
- Data City Strategy
- India Urban Observatory
- India Urban Data Exchange
- Smart Cities Open Data Initiative
- National Urban Innovation Stack
- National Urban Digital Mission
- ICT standards
- India Cycles4Change (IC4C) Challenge
- Streets4people Challenge
- Nurturing Neighbourhoods Challenge
- Transport 4 all (T4All) Challenge
- EatSmart Cities Challenge
- City Investments to Innovate, Integrate and Sustain (CITIIS) Challenge
- Climate Centre for Cities
- Climate Smart Cities Alliance
- India Smart Cities Fellowship Program
- The urban Learning Internship Program
The Minister also informed that smart cities have played important role in managing the crises during Covid-19. With Integrated Command and Control Centres being usedas Covid-19 War Room, they have helped in the area of information, communication, management and preparedness.
Hon’ble MPs made many valuable suggestions during the meeting.
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