Before the Smart Cities project started, Venkaiah Naidu, the urban development minister of India, had delivered a memorable quote – "jitna aata, utni roti" – thus effectively implying that he would only go as far as his means allowed him to. However, now it seems that he may be bowing to political pressure from various circles and permitting the entry of more cities into the Smart Cities project. The urban development policy stated quite clearly that only 100 cities would be part of the revolutionary project, which is supposed to be completed over the coming five years. However, now nine more cities – including state capitals – have been brought into the fold.
List of Smart Cities Added
- Patna
- Thiruvananthapuram
- Bengaluru
- Amaravati
- Itanagar
- Gangtok
- Srinagar
- Jammu
- Rae Bareilly
- Meerut
Nomination of more cities than permissible
In fact, the governments in Uttar Pradesh, and Jammu and Kashmir have also been given the power to nominate the cities. UP has gone with Meerut and Rae Bareilly, and J&K has chosen its two capitals – Jammu and Srinagar. This entire choice can be regarded as a blatant disregard of rules set before. Aishwar Rao, spokesperson of the said ministry, has, however, denied that there was any political influence behind the inclusion of the aforementioned cities. Whereas, recent events in Jammu and Kashmir would suggest that such this claim may not be entirely true. The government of Jammu and Kashmir was unable to nominate any city after regional leaders in both parts went toe-to-toe in demanding smart cities for their respective areas. This impasse continued for more than a year. According to Muhammad Ashraf Mir, who was the state’s urban development minister until March 2016, the decision to choose both cities was a politically-motivated one and was done with the intention of appeasing people.The lack of infrastructure to support execution
Experts opine that one area where proper execution of the Smart Cities project could face some serious issues is infrastructure. It has already been a year since the project was announced. It is supposed to be completed by 2022 and the government is supposed to spend INR 50,000 crore as initial investment. Very recently in Pune, PM Narendra Modi introduced a variety of proposals on the occasion of the first anniversary of the said project. They may be enumerated as below:- plain slum rehabilitation
- sewage treatment plants
- plastic bottle recycling
- setting up new-age information and communications technology (ICT) solutions
- e-pathshalas
- intelligent transit management system
- intelligent street poles
- multi-purpose smart cards across every mode of public transport
