Hyd, Warangal among smart cities

New Delhi: Aiming at improving the quality of urban life, the Union government on Thursday unveiled a list of 98 cities in the country for the Smart City Mission (SCM). Union Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu has officially launched the mission which includes five cities in the two Telugu States.

The cities are Visakhapatnam, Tirupati and Kakinada in AP and Hyderabad and Warangal in Telangana.Elaborating on the concept of Smart City Mission, Naidu said: “A smart city would ensure core infrastructure needed for decent living in urban areas.” We are not aiming at making our urban landscape look fanciful and flashy.

The prime objective is to enhance the quality of urban life by addressing deficiencies in the core infrastructure. Expectations in various quarters may be high but the Mission is very practical and realistic in its intentions and objectives.” "There are 13 cities from Uttar Pradesh, 12 from Tamil Nadu, 10 from Maharashtra, seven from Madhya Pradesh and three each from Bihar in the list," Naidu said.

Naidu said making smart cities was a challenging task and states and urban local bodies had to rise to the challenge. He said the Central government had undertaken various measures to empower them to meet the challenge through substantially enhanced Central assistance and decentralizing decision making besides assisting in capacity building of urban local bodies.

He said that as against the Central assistance of only Rs 36,000 crore during the 10 years of JNNURM, the Centre would now provide about Rs 3 lakh crore under various new urban initiatives. The minister has ruled out any discrimination in the selection of the cities under the programme and said it was made as per the stipulated criteria. Naidu said a population of 13 crore across these cities would be covered under the initiative.