New Delhi

Surat and Ahmedabad are two cities from Gujarat that have been selected for the first round of funding under central government’s Smart City scheme.

Union Urban Development Minister Shri Venkaiah Naidu today made announcement of 20 cities selected for Smart City scheme for first year funding. The cities are: Bhubneswar, Pune, Jaipur, Surat, Kochi, Ahmedabad, Jabalpur, Vishakhapattanam, Solapur, Dhavangiri, Indore, New Delhi Municipal Corporation(NDMC), Coimbatore, Kakinada, Udaipur, Guwahati, Ludhiana, Bhopal, Chennai and Belgavi.

Surat will need to generate Rs 350 crore through convergence and Rs 750 crore from Public Private Partnership(PPP) mode.

Cities of those states that couldn’t qualify in this round will be given fast-track opportunity to submit upgraded proposals by April 15th.

Cities will need to create a special purpose vehicle to implement for implementation. The cities with low scoring (like 55%) will need to upgrade their proposal so that we can release fund for them, said Naidu adding that Rs 200 crore fund from centre and matching fund from state will be released this year itself.

– DeshGujarat