The winners of the second round of the Smart City Challenge were announced in September 2016. In this round, there was participation from 63 potential smart cities out of which 27 Smart Cities were selected as the winners of the second round.
As part of the initiative, upon announcing the winners, the Government of India announced that these 27 cities will be taken up for development as Smart Cities. In the first round of the Smart City Challenge, there were 20 winners that belonged to 12 states and the funding for these winners was allotted for the financial year 2015-16.
The primary goal of the Smart City Mission is sustainable urban development and transformation. After the first round of winners was declared in January 2016, in order to give an opportunity to all the states and union territories, a special Fast Track competition was conducted. This gave a chance to the remaining states and union territories that could not be covered in the first round and these were given a chance to upgrade their proposals.
A fair chance to all
This was the first time ever, not just in India, but in the entire world that investments in the urban sector were being made based on competition that had selected the cities. Being the premier event of the mission since its launch, it was a special
occasion.
Out of the 23 cities, 13 were selected in the Fast Track round that was declared in May 2016. Minister of Urban Development and Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation M Venkaiah Naidu made the announcement of the winners.
The minister also informed that Lucknow that had missed the list of first 20 smart cities in the first round had improved the quality of its smart city plan by 19 per cent to make it to the select list and top it. Other winners of this Fast Track competition were Warangal in Telangana (13 per cent), Dharamshala in Himachal Pradesh (27 per cent), Chandigarh (9 per cent), Raipur in Chhattisgarh (25 per cent), New Town Kolkata (11 per cent), Bhagalpur in Bihar (25 per cent), Panaji Goa (9 per cent), Port Blair in Andaman & Nicobar Islands(26 per cent), Imphal in Manipur (27 per cent), Ranchi in Jharkhand (27 per cent), Agartala in Tripura (25 per cent) and Faridabad in Haryana (12 per cent).
Chandigarh Smart City has envisioned becoming a leader in liveability, sustainability, equality and innovation. The Chandigarh Smart City mission envisions providing for the aspiration and needs of the citizens, developing the entire urban ecosystem, which represents by the four pillars of comprehensive development i.e., institutional, physical, social and economic infrastructure and work towards developing such comprehensive infrastructure incrementally adding on layers of ‘Smartness’.
Port Blair focused heavily on citizen participation and underlined an important role of the same in the preparation of the SCP. The Andaman and Nicobar Islands administration sought views of its citizens for inclusion in the SCP before submission to the Ministry of Urban Development. The administration provided a forum to its citizens for productive discussionsemerging out of living experiences, ideas and solutions for issues that are faced by the city residents.
All the participating cities from West Bengal (New Town, Kolkata, Bidhannagar, Durgapur, and Haldia) withdrew from the Smart Cities Mission when the West Bengal government rejected Centre’s ‘Smart City Project’ for obvious political reasons.
The cities that participated in the competition improved the quality of smart city plans by up to over 25 per cent to become eligible for the selection. With the selection of these 13 cities, 25 States and Union Territories were now covered under the Smart City Mission.
A merit-based selection process
The second round of winners of the Smart City Challenge was declared in September 2016. The 27 winners included, in ascending order of rank:
Amritsar in Punjab; Kalyan-Dombivali in Maharashtra; Ujjain in Madhya Pradesh; Tirupati in Andhra Pradesh; Nagpur in Maharashtra; Mangaluru in Karnataka; Vellore in Tamil Nadu; Thane in Maharashtra; Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh; Agra in Uttar Pradesh; Nashik in Maharashtra; Rourkela in Odisha; Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh; Madurai in Tamil Nadu; Tumakuru in Karnataka; Kota in Rajasthan; Thanjavur in Tamil Nadu; Namchi in Sikkim; Jalandhar in Punjab; Shivamogga in Karnataka; Salem in Tamil Nadu; Ajmer in Rajasthan; Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh; Kohima in Nagaland; Hubballi-Dharwad in Karnataka; Aurangabad in Maharashtra and Vadodara in Gujarat.
The task of going through the proposals of participants and measuring the proposals against the set parameters was a humungous one. The ranking of the 27 selected cities was decided on the basis of a rigorous evaluation process done by a panel of experts.
It was entirely a merit-based process where scoring was done by the expert panel and then the selection was made based on those scores. The 27 cities in the second round of winners were selected for financial funding in the financial year 2016-17.
Based on the evaluations, first the panel of experts suggest improvements in the proposal of the selected cities. Second, all the smart cities proposals have a committed timeline of actions that the cities have to adhere to. The timelines and the progress are strictly monitored and in case of any delay, the cities may even be asked to exit the Smart City Mission.
Towards higher levels of development
When the Union Minister of Urban Development Venkaiah Naidu was announcing the winners, he spoke at length of the goals of the mission. He said, as part of the efforts for India’s transformation towards higher levels of social and economic development, the renaissance of urban sector has been set in motion through a paradigm shift in policies and programmes.
He said, “The new approaches introduced, the new churning at the level of urban local bodies and States/UTs, the new spirit of competition among cities and states to do better than others, the new enthusiasm and vigour being demonstrated, the new clarity of thought about outcomes and actions to be taken and the new beginning towards urban transformation in a more purposeful and holistic manner marked the process of urban renaissance.”
It must be noted that today, in India and around the world, the drivers of development and transformation are different from what was ten years ago. The world is changing very fast and it is essential to keep pace with changing times to ensure sustainability and survival.
So, ‘extensive stakeholder consultations and citizen participation, selection of cities based on competition and other objective criteria, full autonomy to cities and States/UTs to formulate, appraise and approve projects, replacing project based sanctions of the past to area and outcome based planning, convergence based implementation of schemes and substantial enhancement in Central assistance are the major drivers of urban revival’.
Of the many initiatives undertaken under the Smart City Mission, the expo has been received very well. Minister of the Department of IT in Government of Bihar Jibesh Kumar said, it’s time to restart growth in the country with B2B exhibitions and trade events by adopting appropriate safety measures to build a Digital and Smart India.”