By TIOL News Service

NEW DELHI, JAN 01, 2018: Addressing the Parliamentary consultative committee meeting attached to the Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs here last thursday, MR Hardeep Puri, Minister of State (I/C) for Housing and Urban Affairs has informed that a total investment of Rs.1,91,155 crore has been proposed by the 90 cities under their smart city plans.  Projects focusing on revamping an identified area are estimated to cost Rs.1,52,500 crore .  Smart initiatives across the city account for the remaining Rs.36,655 crore of investments .  Besides ABD and Pan city projects an amount of Rs.1,998.49 crore has been kept aside for O&M cost of the Mission and other contingencies.

The implementation of the Smart Cities Mission is done by a Special Purpose Vehicle(SPV) to be set up at city level in the form of a limited company under the Companies Act, 2013 and are promoted by the State/UT and the Urban Local Body(ULB) jointly both having 50:50 equity shareholding. After selection, each selected Smart City has to set up SPVs and start implementation of their Smart City Proposal, preparation of Detailed Project Reports (DPRs), tenders.  The SPV will convert the Smart City Proposal into projects through Project Management Consultants(PMCs) and implementation thereafter.  So far 77 Smart Cities (including 11 of the Round 3 cities) have established their SPVs, he further informed.

The Minister further informed that projects worth Rs.1,35,459 crore in 2,855 projects are in various stages of implementation.  While 147 projects worth Rs.1,872 crore have been completed and 396 projects with a  cost of Rs.14,672 cores are currently under implementation  Further tendering has started for 283 projects with a cost of Rs.16,549 and detailed project reports are being prepared for 2,029 projects worth Rs.1,02,366 crores. 

 Informing the Members present, Mr puri informed that “The selection process of Smart Cities is based on the idea of Competitive and Cooperative Federalism and follows a Challenge process to select cities in two stages.  A two stage selection process has been followed.  In the first stage, total number of 100 smart cities has been distributed amongst the States and UTs on the basis of equitable criteria. 

 In Stage 1, all States/UTs shortlisted 98 potential Smart Cities to participate in Stage II.  Further, on the basis of requests received from States, 12 new potential Smart Cities (left out capital cities and equal scoring cities) have also been included to participate in All India Competition (Stage 2) of the Smart City Challenge Process. In Stage II, 90 cities (20 cities in Round1 in January 2016, 13 cities in fast track round in May 2016, 27 cities in Round 2 in September, 2016 and 30 cities in Round 3 in June 2017) have been selected so far. The other 10 cities are expected to be selected in this financial year (2017-18), the Minister further informed.