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  India   One more UP city likely to find place in 3rd list

One more UP city likely to find place in 3rd list

Published : Sep 17, 2016, 5:05 am IST
Updated : Sep 17, 2016, 5:05 am IST

At least one more city from poll-bound Uttar Pradesh is likely to figure in the third list of 27 smart cities that Union urban development minister M.

At least one more city from poll-bound Uttar Pradesh is likely to figure in the third list of 27 smart cities that Union urban development minister M. Venkaiah Naidu will announce next week, sources in the ministry said. Lucknow was the first city from the state that was chosen to be amongst first 100.

A total of 13 names were given to the Centre in July last year by Uttar Pradesh government to be developed as smart cities. Besides Lucknow, which has already made it, others are Ghaziabad, Meerut, Aligarh, Saharanpur, Moradabad, Bareilly, Agra and Rampur from western UP and Varanasi, Jhansi, Allahabad and Kanpur from eastern UP. Varanasi is Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s constituency.

Interestingly, Mr Naidu, along with Union water resources minister Uma Bharti, last month announced 10 smart Ganga cities — five of them in UP — as part of its Namami Gange programme, out of which four, minus Mathura, are amongst the names proposed for smart cities as well.

“Varanasi, Allahabad, Kanpur and Lucknow were included in the 10 smart cities to be developed as part of clean Ganga project,” said a source, adding, “Now, with Lucknow already picked, the chances are rife that in the 27 cities to be announced by UD ministry next week one of the remaining three may find a place.”

A senior UD ministry official, on condition of anonymity, said: “The work on many parameters laid out by the Centre to qualify for smart city have already started in these three cities in UP under clean Ganga project. As some of the activities overlap in smart city and smart Ganga city programs, it would also be beneficial in terms of over all results that one of these three cities be picked up in the next list.”

So far, 33 cities have been selected by the Centre for development as smart cities with sustainable urban infrastructure and facilities. The government has to choose 100 cities for the first phase which has to be completed by 2019-20. An outlay of `48,000 crore has been kept for the flagship program over a period of five years. Most of the chosen 33 cities have constituted their special purpose vehicles.

Location: India, Delhi, New Delhi