'Selection of 10 more Smart Cities soon'

New Delhi: Union Minister of State (I/C) for Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep S Puri on Tuesday said that selection of ten more Smart Cities would be announced shortly.

"The Smart Cities Mission is progressing at a brisk pace. A total of 90 cities have been selected so far. There are about 3,000 projects worth Rs 1,40,000 crore at various stages of implementation," the Minister said while addressing FICCI Smart Cities Summit 2018.

Puri said Smart City Mission is setting a new benchmark in terms of project implementation. In a short duration of 2.5 years, the first rounds of 20 cities were selected in January 2016, and last 30 cities were selected as recently as June 2017 which is a small period in terms of the urban development life-cycle where transitions take place over decades.

"Tenders for projects worth Rs 16,000 crore have been called, and more than 1 lakh crore worth of projects are being readied for issuance of tenders. This remains one of the fastest ever project implementations at this scale and geographic spread in urban sector," the Minister said.

He further said that Smart City Mission has a strong focus on innovative digital technologies and dovetails with Digital India 'vision areas' such as digital empowerment of citizens, making government services available digitally, and creating digital infrastructure as utility to every citizen. "Till now 82 special purpose vehicles (SPVs) have been formed and considering the capacity gaps existing at cities, this is not a small achievement by any standards.