Minister gives update on Rs.30,000 crore projects

About 400 Smart City Mission (SCM) projects, costing Rs. 20,000 crore, are in tender stage, and would be settled over a next 2-3 months, said Hardeep Singh Puri, Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs.

Ninety-eight SCM projects, Rs.6,000 crore are under implementation with good response from the Public Private Partnership (PPP) scheme not only in the big cities but even in smaller towns.

More than Rs.30,000 crore worth of 936 SCM projects were in implementation phase as of April 2018, up from Rs.8,000 crore in August 2017.

Puri gave this update at the two-day ‘First Apex Conference for CEOs of Smart Cities’ which opened in Bhopal on 8 May 2018.

Twenty-six more Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) were established in the last eight months, taking the total SPVs implementing SCM projects to 91.

Tenders have been issued in 32 more cities while Smart City Centres are being established in 14 more cities. As of date, nine centres are operating including one in Bhopal.

Puri has also urged the Smart City CEOs to learn from experience and practices of other city leaders to accelerate the progress of SCM across the country.

The Minister has also announced the setting up of Advisory Committees on 9 themes, viz. Entrepreneurship and Start-ups; Women Empowerment, Safety, and Security; Smart Education and Skill Development; Divyang Friendly Measures and Policy Recommendations; Septage and Sewage Management; Promotion of Public Art; Urban Mobility and Climate Change; Arts and Culture; and Smart Security with an aim to bring on board expertise from outside the practitioner’s domain, and adopt a holistic approach to urbanization. fii-news.com