Niti Aayog Study Reveals Underperformance Of Guwahati Smart City

According to recent assessments by Niti Aayog, Assam's Guwahati is one of the least successful smart cities in the nation. Only nine of the 185 projects in total, totaling Rs 22.56 billion have been completed. 

The research conducted by Niti Aayog shows that Guwahati's disappointing performance is not an outlier. Shillong, Aizawl, and Imphal are just a few of the Northeastern cities that have had difficulty advancing their individual smart city efforts significantly. The same can be said for towns like Amaravati, Diu, Greater Warangal, Kavaratti, Port Blair, and Puducherry, which struggle and are among the worst-performing metropolitan regions.

The report also notes that 32 smart cities have surpassed their initial project completion goals, some of them by a factor of four. Despite the COVID-19 pandemic's challenges and other political, regional, and local land and labour problems, a remarkable Rs 390.85 billion worth of projects were successfully finished across the country in the previous year.

The Ministry of Urban Development gave Guwahati a cash award worth Rs 3.96 billion, however it wasn't utilised till 2022. The five-year Smart City project in Guwahati has a total budget of Rs 22.56 billion, with contributions from the federal government and the state government of Rs 5 billion each anticipated. Urban local governments were expected to use a variety of methods to earn the remaining funds, including user fees, beneficiary fees, land monetisation, liens, and loans.