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For Smart Cities Mission (SCM) to be fast-tracked, the government will award tenders worth over Rs 2 lakh crores by March next year, as well as finish smart city projects worth Rs 50,000 crore by June 2020, which also marks 5 years of the launch of the mission.
Sources said the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs will issue tenders for all the projects under the SCM by March 2020. It has already started work in this direction and ministry officials are coordinating with respective cities.
At present, 100 cities have created SPVs for launching various smart city projects. Tenders have been issued for more than 3,800 projects worth around Rs 1.41 lakh crores, which constitutes 70% of the value of all the projects under the mission. Of this, work has either been completed or has started on around 3,000 projects worth Rs 97,000 crores. A senior official said the ministry has also created a central command centre – National Urban Observatory – to track the progress of various projects and coordinate with stakeholders at the national, regional and local levels.
The
official said that the intention is to speed up the projects. Also, the
ministry will come out with a performance report card by September for these
cities, which will detail the best and worst performing cities as well as
highlight challenges and problems being faced while implementing the projects.
It will also review the mission’s performance.
The smart cities mission that was launched in June 2015 intends to transform 100 cities into smart IT-enabled cities with a focus on sustainable and inclusive development of urban clusters. The models developed would be replicable and would be used for similar projects in future. Under the mission, the Centre allocates Rs 500 crore to every city in instalments, while an equal amount is provided by the state or urban local body. The balance can be arranged through convergence with different schemes/missions of Centre/state, loans, land value capture, public private partnerships and local bodies’ own resources.
Source: Financial Express
