PM meets officials on plans for smart cities

NEW DELHI:  As part of a series of consultations on his pet project of building 100 smart cities in the country, Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday held a meeting with senior Government officials.

The PM asked the officials to identify the basics of infrastructure, quality of life, and citizen-centric services that would be essential for these 21st century cities, which will be built as satellite towns of metropolises and by modernising existing mid-sized cities.

According to reports, officials made presentations on urban statistics with one presentation suggesting that “a new Chicago needs to be built every year.”

The Prime Minister said at the meeting that the smart cities should be identified as hubs of economic activity and that the focus would be on turning “waste to wealth” with waste management and waste-water treatment processes.

Modi has asked the Ministry of Urban Development to organise a workshop on this at the earliest, where officials would focus on reforms in laws related to urban development. The focus of the smart city must not only be on the urbanpopulation, but also on the “urban-dependent” population, Modi instructed.