Nagpur city is leading the implementation of smart city plan followed by Indore, Vadodara and Surat, according to a survey done by the Ministry of Urban Development.
Nagpur, which was selected to be a smart city in September 2016 has achieved the best Investment Conversion Ratio (ICR) of 249 % in just five months. ICR indicates the extent of conversion of approved smart city plans into investments through ground level implementation.
Initially, Rs 1,002 crore investment was proposed for Nagpur but this Maharashtra city has managed to line up an investment of Rs 2,500 crore surpassing other 33 smart cities of India .
Indore has lined up Rs 4,900 crore investment as against Rs 5,099 crore proposed in the plan approved by the centre. Surat has also lined up Rs 2,500 crore investment while the plan approved was for Rs 2,597 crore.
“With an overall ICR of 49% in less than a year and a half of announcement, the performance of first batch of 20 smart cities in respect of implementation of smart city plans is encouraging, though some of them, particularly, the southern cities need to pick up momentum. Fast track and round-two cities, which deserve more time to improve ICR have, during the review assured the ministry that conversion of respective smart city plans into ground level projects would speed up resulting in increased ICR,” a ministry spokesperson told The Times of India.
The survey also found that Kochi (Kerala), Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh), Davanagere (Karnataka), Coimbatore (Tamil Nadu), Kakinada (Andhra Pradesh), Belagavi (Karnataka) and Chennai (Tamil Nadu) are lagging behind in the implementation of the smart city plan.
