Bengal's Green City Mission gets a kickstart

The Green City Mission of the West Bengal government will start with an initial funding of Rs 50 lakh each to all 125 municipalities, state Urban Development Minister Firhad Hakim said today.
"We will offer Rs 50 lakh to each of the municipalities as initial fund to begin work for the green city mission of the state," he said on the sidelines of CII organised 'Green Buildings' conference.
The state government had created a corpus of Rs 400 crore for the project conceptualised after it did not find the Centre's smart city scheme feasible.
"We have constraints on resources. In smart city project the state will have to fund Rs 1,000 crore upfront and then the Centre will release Rs 500 crore in five years," Hakim said.

An urban development department official said only 20 municipalities out of the 125 had submitted the filled in questionnaire given to them in November to understand their requirement under the mission.
The minister also said the benefit of extra 10 percent Floor Area Ratio would be extended to all municipalities. He also emphasised that there was need for reframing of planning principals to bear the mounting pressure of urbanisation.