As part of ongoing stakeholder consultations for effective implementation of Smart City Mission, Union Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu will interact with mayors, municipal chairpersons and commissioners of 20 cities and towns at a workshop in New Town, Kolkata tomorrow.
The regional workshop on Smart City Mission will also be attended by Principal Secretaries of Urban Development Departments and other senior officials from the from 13 eastern and north-eastern states.
Union Minister of State for Urban Development Babul Supriyo will also attend the workshop.
Naidu will broadly outline the challenges to be addressed for building Smart Cities including the need for a forward looking and visionary leadership by both elected and executive heads of these cities, and for urban governance reforms and an enabling environment for mobilisation of resources required for the mission including through PPP model.
Twenty cities in Smart City Mission from these 13 states include New Town, Bidhan Nagar, Durgapur and Haldia from West Bengal; Muzaffarpur, Bhagalpur and Biharshariff from Bihar; Bhubaneswar and Rourkela from Odisha; Raipur and Bilaspur from Chhattisgarh; Ranchi from Jharkhand; Namchi in Sikkim; and North-Eastern cities of Guwahati, Pasighat (Arunachal Pradesh), Imphal, Shillong, Aizawl, Kohima and Agartala.
Each of these cities have been given Rs 2 crore for preparation of city level Smart City Plans in the next three months. All the 100 city level plans will be evaluated based on a set of elaborate criteria in the second stage of City Challenge competition for identifying the top scoring 20 cities for financing during the current financial year.
These 20 cities have been nominated by the respective state governments after the first round of competition, further to evaluation of all urban local bodies in each state as per a set of criteria including the existing service levels, institutional and financial capacities and past track record in implementation of JNNURM projects and reforms undertaken.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched Smart City Mission on June 25. The central government has made a provision of Rs 48,000 crore for five years for supporting the Mission through central assistance of Rs 100 crore per city per year.
States and urban local bodies have to make a matching contribution and have to mobilise additional required resources through various sources including PPP Model, loans from bilateral and multi-lateral agencies and municipal bonds.
