Chennai: Four more cities from Tamil Nadu — Vellore, Madurai, Thanjavur and Salem — on Tuesday pipped several other cities to make it to the third list of towns that would be developed as “Smart Cities” with world-class infrastructure and public amenities.
These four cities participated in the third round of the nation-wide Smart City competition and emerged victorious. Union urban development minister M. Venkaiah Naidu in New Delhi announced the list of 27 cities that would get generous financial assistance for augmentation of infrastructure, transport facilities and world-class amenities.
Vellore got the seventh place in the all-India rankings, while Madurai emerged 14th, Thanjavur (17) and Salem (21). With this, the number of cities that would get the “Smart City” tag in Tamil Nadu has risen to 6.
The state would get a total of 12 Smart Cities, next only to Uttar Pradesh's tally of 13. The Golden Temple city of Amritsar topped the list of 27 new smart cities Ujjain, Tirupati, Agra, Nashik, Madurai, Thanjavur, Ajmer and Varanasi are the pilgrim towns that made it to the list.
Announcing the cities that were selected in a competition among 63 cities, Mr Naidu said the willingness and enthusiasm among cities to participate in more than one round of competition is a clear evidence of the urban renaissance set in motion.
"Competition based selection has made the cities rediscover themselves as they are undertaking a thorough assessment of gaps in the present levels of infrastructure and service delivery and come out with comprehensive, credible and actionable plans for area based development and technology based Pan-city solutions," he said.
The new 27 smart cities have proposed an investment of Rs.66,883 crore under smart city plans including Rs 42,524 crore under Area Based Development and another Rs.11,379 crore for technology based Pan-city solutions that benefits all the citizens of respective cities. With this, the total investment proposed by the 60 cities selected so far has gone up to Rs 1,44,742 crore.
The Smart City project aims at making existing cities "smart" by developing a smart transport system that would restrict the travel time within the city to 30 to 45 minutes, providing 100 per cent access to toilets and 100 per cent coverage of road network with storm water drainage network.
All state capitals, cities with a population of one to four million and those with tourist and religious importance have qualified to be a Smart City that would also boast 24/7 water supply and electricity, 100 mbps internet connectivity and telemedicine facilities.
