Govt announces 3rd Smart Cities list, Varanasi makes the cut

The government today made 27 new additions to the Smart Cities Mission. The fresh list includes Varanasi, the Lok Sabha constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The cumulative number of cities selected under the Smart City programme has gone up to 60, and a sum of Rs 1,44,742 crore is envisaged for financing of the smart city plan.

Eight prominent cities of pilgrim and tourism importance that have made to the third list are Ujjain, Tirupati, Agra, Nashik, Madurai, Thanjavur, and Ajmer, besides Varanasi. Vadodara, Nagpur, Amritsar, Gwalior and Thane are some of the other cities to be developed as smart cities in the future.

Announcing the cities that were selected in a competition among 63 cities, Minister of Urban Development M. Venkaiah Naidu today said: "The willingness and enthusiasm among cities to participate in more than one round of competition is a clear evidence of the urban renaissance set in motion. Competition-based selection has made the cities rediscover themselves as they are undertaking a thorough assessment of gaps in the present levels of infrastructure and service delivery, and come out with comprehensive, credible and actionable plans for area based development and technology-based pan-city solutions."

So far, the 60 cities selected by the ministry in three rounds cover 27 states and Union Territories. Only nine more states and UTs are still to get on board, including Uttarakhand and Jammu and Kashmir, the ministry said in a statement.

The 27 smart cities announced today are from 12 States including five from Maharashtra, four each from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka, three from Uttar Pradesh and two each from Punjab and Rajasthan. Nagaland and Sikkim have made it to the smart city list for the first time.

Stating that the Smart City Mission is running ahead of schedule, Naidu informed that the next round of competition to select the remaining 40 cities would begin in January next year.