AMRUT plans worth over Rs 19K cr approved for 474 cities

NEW DELHI, December 15: A whopping Rs 19,170 crore budget has been lined up for improving the basic infrastructure in as many as 474 cities across 18 states and Union Territories under the AMRUT programme for 2015-16. As per the city-level action plans approved by the Urban Development Ministry under the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT), about 90 percent of the expenditure would be on improving water supply and sewerage infrastructure followed by the provision of storm- water drains, non-motorised urban transport and green spaces and parks. Central assistance for this project is over Rs 9,000 crore. A total of 497 cities are identified under the Atal Mission although city-level plans of 23 mission cities across Delhi, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Goa and the north-eastern states are still to be approved. An inter-ministerial apex committee chaired by UD Secretary Madhusudhan Prasad today approved AMRUT Annual Action Plans for Uttar Pradesh and Karnataka for 2015-16. Uttar Pradesh has 61 Atal Mission cities while Karnataka has 27. This was the fifth meeting of the committee. During the discussion on State Plans today, the apex committee noted that even as water supply in the urban areas of Uttar Pradesh was high, non-revenue water (NRW, or water supplied without collection of user charges) was also very high, exceeding the norm of 20 percent for urban areas in case of all mission cities. Prasad asked the state government to focus on reducing NRW to the national norm. The committee also noted that, in the case of Karnataka, the 27 urban local bodies included in Atal Mission were required to contribute 30 percent to 47 percent of project costs and asked the state government to increase its share in project costs to reduce the burden on municipal bodies. The apex committee approved a project outlay of Rs 4,646 crore for UP under Atal Mission for 2015-16. Of this, Rs 1,519 crore is for water supply infrastructure, Rs 1,698 crore for expanding sewerage network services and Rs 70 crore for providing green spaces and parks in mission cities. In UP, coverage of water taps is to the extent of 54 percent of urban households while water supply is at 161 litres per capita per day, which is much higher than the norm of 135 lpcd prescribed for urban areas of the country. As per the approval for the investments to be made in some major cities, Ghaziabad is to see works worth Rs 352 crore, followed by Lucknow (Rs 305 crore), Jhansi (Rs 223 crore), Kanpur (Rs 200 crore), Allahabad (Rs 190 crore), Varanasi (Rs 180 crore), Modinagar (Rs 180 crore), Mirzapur (Rs 140 crore), Meerut (Rs 125 crore), Moradabad (Rs 109 crore), Bulandshahr (Rs 107 crore), Ghazipur (Rs 98 crore), Saharanpur (Rs 80 crore) and Raibareilly (Rs 65 crore). For Karnataka, the apex committee approved project expenditure of Rs 1,258 crore under the AMRUT Plan for 2015-16. Of this, Rs 552 crore will be spent on augmenting water supply in mission cities while Rs 613 crore would be spent on sewerage projects followed by construction of storm-water drains (Rs 49 crore), provision of green spaces and parks (Rs 28 crore) and urban transport (Rs 18 crore). Under AMRUT Plans for 2015-16, investments to be made in the mission cities in Karnataka for water supply, sewerage, storm-water drains and urban transport projects are Bengaluru (Rs 173 crore), Raichur (Rs 77 crore), Hubli-Dharwad (Rs 75 crore), Bellary (Rs 72 crore), Gulbarga (Rs 66 crore), Belgavi (Rs 60 crore), Bijapur (Rs 60 crore), Tumakuru (Rs 53 crore), Bhadravati (Rs 51 crore), Mysore (Rs 50 crore), Davanagere (Rs 50 crore), Shivamogga (Rs 48 crore), Gadag-Betagiri (Rs 45 crore), Bidar (Rs 42 crore), Hospeta (Rs 38 crore), Chitradurga (Rs 34 crore), Hassan (Rs 32 crore), Bagalkot (Rs 31 crore), Ranebennur (Rs 25 crore), Chikkamagaluru (Rs 24 crore), Kolar (Rs 18 crore), Gangavati (Rs 16 crore), Robertsonpet (Rs 14 crore), Badami (Rs 12 crore), Mangalur (Rs 3.25 crore). Under AMRUT, central assistance is provided to the extent of 50 percent of the project cost in case of cities with population of less than 10 lakh and up to one third in case of cities with population of above 10 lakh.