The Government’s Smart City programme has made a considerable progress in 2018, as compared to the performance in previous two years, it has been revealed.
The Smart City Mission, which aims to develop 100 Smart Cities, has been overseen by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) and monitored through a scientifically devised system by the Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry.
Between January 2016 and January 2018, projects worth Rs 33,970 crore were tendered. By February 2019, there was a 270 percent growth amounting to Rs 1, 26,000 crore.
Projects worth Rs 19, 041 crore were grounded or completed by January 2018, which further increased by 319 percent, amounting to Rs 79,780 crore by February 2019, the Economic Times has reported citing the official data.
The Smart City programme is dealt in batches of 20 cities. The first phase of 20 cities was chosen by January 2016, six months after the launch of the project in June 2015.
Under the Smart City Programme, the country was divided into five zones, namely, east, west, north, south and central and consisted of 20 cities each. The mission was internally christened as ‘Mission One Lakh Crore’ aimed to be completed by December 2018.
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According to one of the directors of the mission, city support coordinators were appointed among the team members. Each member of the team of Mission Management Unit at Delhi and the Technical Assistance team was mapped to some cities. They had to report to the ministry on the progress and bottlenecks arising in the programme and the ministry further helped them in troubleshooting.
The period between June to December 2018 was utilised for monitoring the progress in the five zones and also identified cities and projects which could not be executed.
