States completing Smart Cities faster to get incentives from the Centre

Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 30th August 2017 asked all the chief secretaries of states to regulate the progress of smart city projects to get completed early. In an effort to motivate the local governments for faster completion of smart city projects, The Centre will give about Rs 3,700 crore as incentive to states. The states will be chosen through a competition.

90 cities, under the ambitious smart city scheme, have already been selected, with projects worth Rs 1.91 lakh crore being approved already. The incentive amount will be about 2% of the cost of all projects.

The PM has stated that the cities have been selected and the projects stand approved so the sole focus would be on completing them according to the benchmarks set internationally, an official said.

The PM interacted with the secretaries and chief secretaries under PRAGATI initiative, through the web and housing and urban affairs ministry secretary DurgaShanker Mishra has said that the competition for getting incentive would start soon. “He appreciated the participation of cities in the challenge route. He said the challenge before everyone is now to ensure implementation and expeditious completion of the work in the 90 identified cities, with high quality,” an official release from the PMO states.

Till now, about 79 projects worth Rs 941 crore have been completed and another 204 projects worth Rs 7,963 crore are at advanced stage.