Balancing act: Centre announces new list of smart cities
In what appears to be a balancing
act, the Centre has come out with a revised list of 13 cities, to be developed
as smart cities, many of them from non-NDA ruled states.
Lucknow, Bhagalpur, New Town in Kolkata, Dharamsala, Warangal, Chandigarh, Faridabad, Raipur, Ranchi, Agartala, Imphal, Port Blair and Panaji are the other cities chosen on Tuesday through a fast-track competition.
The 20 cities selected in January under the scheme were Bhubaneswar, Pune, Jaipur, Surat, Kochi, Ahmedabad, Jabalpur, Visakhapatnam, Solapur, Davangere, Indore, the New Delhi area, Coimbatore, Kakinada, Belgaum, Udaipur, Guwahati, Chennai, Ludhiana and Bhopal.
The names were picked from a list of 97 cities submitted by states during a competition last year. To qualify, states and local administrations had to provide "smart answers" to a template with 43 questions.
The smart cities are meant to ensure 24X7 power and water supplies, e governance, Internet connectivity among other things.
When the Centre had announced the first list of 20 names, states like Bihar and their CMs had questioned why no name from their state had figured on the list. The BJP had countered that even the PM was unable to get his constituency included in the list.
