First list of 20 Smart Cities out; Bhubaneswar comes on top

Union Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu on Thursday announced the list of the first 20 cities to be developed as Smart Cities, with Bhubaneswar topping the list and Pune and Jaipur coming in at the second and third place respectively. Among others on the list are Surat, Kochi and Ahmedabad.

These cities will be developed to have basic infrastructure through assured water and power supply, sanitation and solid waste management, efficient urban mobility and public transport, IT connectivity, e-governance and citizen participation.

“The states selected cities and sent us a list of 97 names. There was a competition among these names and 20 cities have been selected,” Naidu said at a news conference in New Delhi. “Bottom up approach has been the key planning principle under Smart City Mission,” he said. “The Smart City Challenge Competition was as rigorous and demanding as the Civil Services competition conducted,” Naidu quipped.

The following is the complete list of the cities: Bhubaneswar. Pune, Jaipur, Surat, Kochi, Ahmedabad, Jabalpur, Visakhapatnam, Solapur, Davanagere, Indore, New Delhi,  Coimbatore, Kakinada, Belgaum, Udaipur, Guwahati, Chennai, Ludhiana and Bhopal.

In the subsequent years, the Government will announce 40 cities each to be developed as Smart Cities as per Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s plan to develop 100 smart cities in the country.

The Government plans to build these smart cities by 2022 to help accommodate its swelling urban population, which is set to rise by more than 400 million people to 814 million by 2050.