RAO INDERJIT SINGH, SHARAD PAWAR MEET M VENKAIAH NAIDU TO DISCUSS SMART CITY MISSION

Minister of Planning Rao Inderjit Singh and NCP leader Sharad Pawar recently met Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu and discussed implementation of Smart City Mission including selection of cities in different states.Singh informed Naidu that Gurgaon in Haryana is a major city and deserved to be developed as a Smart City, according to senior UD Ministry official.  He said that Gurgaon is important for development of Haryana as it generates about 70 per cent of the state’s revenues.

Singh sought technical support from UD Ministry for developing Gurgaon as smart city for which the required resources would be made available by the Haryana government.  Pawar said that Pimpri-Chindwad near Pune is emerging as an important city and has all the credentials to be developed as a smart city.  Naidu informed the two leaders that state governments have nominated cities for inclusion in the Smart City Mission based on a set of criteria prescribed for the first stage of City Challenge competition, after evaluating all urban local bodies within each state.

Naidu said that either during the second stage of City Challenge competition or during the implementation of Smart City Mission in due course, if some of the cities selected under the Mission fail to come up to the norms required, they could be deleted from the Mission and new eligible cities could be included in the smart city mission.Naidu informed the two leaders that he had already made an announcement in this regard while releasing the list of smart cities identified last month.UD Ministry could ask the states to identify the other eligible urban local bodies in each state for including in the Smart Cities Mission in the event of elimination of some of the cities presently included in the Mission.