New Delhi: The Narendra Modi government’s mega Smart City Mission (SCM) project missed its second extended deadline of June this year, forcing the authorities to opt for another fresh deadline of March 31, 2025. “The period of implementation of SCM has been extended up to March 31, 2025, for all Smart Cities,” said Minister of State in the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) Tokhan Sahu in Parliament on Monday.
It was former MoHUA Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, who in the recent past has been claiming that all the projects of India’s 100 smart cities will be completed by June 2024. However, in the third term of the Modi government, Puri was shunted from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. He has been confined to the Ministry of Petroleum and Natural Gas.
Announcing the fresh deadline for completing the Smart City projects in the Rajya Sabha, Sahu said that as per data provided by 100 Smart Cities, as of July 12, 2024, the total value of tenders issued for 8,016 Smart City projects is Rs 1,64,223 crore, of which 7,218 projects amounting to Rs 1,45,083 crore have been completed.
The Narendra Modi-led Central government launched the Smart Cities Mission (SCM) on June 25, 2015, for five years. The main objective of the mission is to promote cities that provide core infrastructure, clean and sustainable environment and give a decent quality of life to their citizens through the application of ‘smart solutions’. A total number of 100 cities have been selected for development as Smart Cities.
As 100 cities have been selected at different timelines during three years from 2015 to 2018, the timeline of five years for completion of the projects was set between 2019 and 2023. However, the mission was extended to June 2024 and now it has been extended to March 2025.
Of the total 8,016 Smart City projects amounting to Rs 164222.68 crore, according to the government statistics, 7218 projects worth Rs 145083.03 crore have been completed till July 12.
The government has vowed to complete the remaining 798 Smart City projects worth Rs 19139.65 crore by March next year. As per the statistics, Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh have the highest number of Smart City projects-908 (Rs 13751.78 crore), 888 (Rs 21092.34 crore) and 788 (Rs 15112.54 crore) respectively.
In Karnataka, a total of 881 projects worth Rs 13330.04 crore, followed by Uttar Pradesh 825 projects worth Rs 19975.01 crore and Madhya Pradesh 739 projects worth Rs 14101.3 crore have been completed till date.
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