The guidelines for Narendra Modi’s ambitious smart cities project, which just got approved previous week is expected to be finalized next week. The guideline for 48,000 crore mega project, which is aimed at recasting the urban landscape is likely to be notified next week after its finalization.
Post the guidelines have been announced, the states and UTs will be asked to nominate name of cities for ‘Smart City Challenge Competition’ and selected ones will get a central fund of Rs 100 crore each years for next five years. The competition will be carried out by Bloomberg Philanthropes, which has been involved in conducting similar competitions in various countries.
The evaluation parameters of selecting these cities will be based upon four key areas – Swachh Bharat (sanitation), Make in India (ease of doing business), good governance (modern accounting system, rationalisation of property taxes) and e-governance.
Further as per the plan, in total of 20 cities will be selected this year, while 40 each will be selected in the coming 2 years, thereby paving the way for NDA’s government ambitious 100 smart cities project.
Lastly, these 100 cities will be a mix of brown-field (old) and Greenfield ventures that would be implemented through an area based approach including retrofitting and redevelopment.