New Delhi: Amidst questions raised on the success of Smart City Mission, the Central Government has claimed that 100% work has been completed in 17 cities and there are 34 cities where more than 90% work has been done. After two extensions, this mission is to be completed in March next year. There is concern about pending work, but except for the cities of Northeast states, the overall progress in the rest is satisfactory. The pace of progress in the cities of Bengal was also slow for a long time, but now the work has accelerated in them too.

plans will be completed on time

According to the officials, the target will be achieved by the stipulated time and now discussions are being held with the states on what should be done to maintain the projects that have been completed and make them self-reliant for their operation. It has already been clarified by the officials of the ministry before a parliamentary committee that now no new project will be approved under this mission and after the completion of the period, the states will have to complete the pending work from their own sources.

Work completed in these cities including Agra, Bareilly

According to the ministry, the cities where all the work has been completed include Agra, Bareilly, Varanasi, Jhansi, Bhopal, Coimbatore, Madurai, Pune, Ranchi, Surat, Udaipur, Shivmoga, Vellore, Bhubaneswar, Kavaratti, Tumkuru and Erode. Madurai had completed all the work last year itself. The cities where more than 90 percent of the work has been completed include Kanpur, Lucknow, Moradabad, Prayagraj, Indore, Jabalpur, Kota, Jaipur, Ajmer, Jammu, Bhagalpur, Amritsar, Chandigarh, Shimla, Guwahati, Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Rajkot, Aurangabad, Bengaluru, Chennai.

90% of projects are complete

In fact, Congress had recently alleged that the Smart City Mission has not proved effective in changing the condition of cities. In response to this, the Ministry of Urban Affairs has highlighted the achievements of this mission. It has said that more than 8000 projects costing Rs 1.60 lakh crore have been operated under this in 100 cities, 90 percent of which have been completed so far.

More than Rs 1.45 lakh crore has been spent on these. More than 75 percent of the work has been completed in 75 cities. For the mission, the central government had to provide assistance of Rs 48 thousand crore to the states, out of which Rs 46 thousand crore has been given.