Smart Cities Mission

Smart Cities Mission, sometimes referred to as Smart City Mission, is an urban renewal and retrofitting program by the Government of India with the mission to develop 100 cities across the country making them citizen friendly and sustainable.The Union Ministry of Urban Development is responsible for implementing the mission in collaboration with the state governments of the respective cities.

Smart Cities Mission envisions developing an area within 100 cities in the country as model areas based on an area development plan, which is expected to have a rub-off effect on other parts of the city,and nearby cities and towns.Cities will be selected based on the Smart Cities challenge, where cities will compete in a countrywide competition to obtain the benefits from this mission. As of January 2018, 99 cities have been selected to be upgraded as part of the Smart Cities Mission after they defeated other cities in the challenge.

It is a five-year program, where all of the Indian states and Union territories are participating, except West Bengal, by nominating at least one city for the Smart Cities challenge. Financial aid will be given by the central and state governments between 2017-2022 to the cities, and the mission will start showing results from 2022 onwards.

Implementation tracking has been poor with many cities not taking any action to implement the scheme after selection. Union Ministry of Urban Development has been lenient on non-performing cities.

Each city will create a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), headed by a full-time CEO, to implement the Smart Cities Mission. The execution of projects may be done through joint ventures, subsidiaries, public-private partnership (PPP), turnkey contracts, etc... suitably dovetailed with revenue streams. Centre and state government will provide INR 1,000 Crore funding to the company, as equal contribution of INR 500 crore each. The company has to raise additional funds from the financial market as a debt or equity.