Seven years since its inception, the Centre has only released 59 per cent of the funds that it had allocated for the Smart Cities Mission. This is according to a Lok Sabha reply by Harshdeep Singh Puri, Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs. Answering a question posed by MPs YS Avinash Reddy and Adoor Prakash, he said the Centre has until now released a total of Rs 28,413.60 crore and 83 per cent of it has been utilised.

While announcing the mission in 2015, the government had said that it would allocate Rs 48,000 crore in five years, which is approximately Rs 500 crore per city. However, going by the current numbers, each city has got around Rs 284 crore from the government so far.

This year, the government allocated Rs 6,444.88 crore for the Mission, which is Rs 162 crore more than last year’s revised estimates. The budget documents say that allocation of funds for the project has increased every financial year, from 2015-16 to 2018-19. However, allocation dropped by over Rs 2,200 crore in 2019-20, and fell further in the next year. The allocations have, however, shot up since FY 2021-22.

According to Lok Sabha data, the total projected expenditure of the project is Rs 2,11,628.23. Of this, the government has pooled in only 13 per cent of the funds. “According to SCM Guidelines, the Central Government will provide financial support to the extent of Rs 48,000 crore over five years i.e. on average Rs 100 crore per city per year. An equal amount on a matching basis will be contributed by the State Government/ Urban Local Body. As of January 21, 2022, the Centre has released Rs 28,413.60 crore for 100 Smart Cities, of which Rs 23,668.27 crore (83 per cent) hax been utilised,” reads the ministry’s response.

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Smart Cities began as a five-year programme and the cities were expected to show results by 2019. However, in 2020, the government extended the deadline until June 2023, owing to the pandemic.

A year and four months until the deadline, we decided to look at the pace of completion of projects in the first 20 cities picked as part of the mission, in 2015.Less than 50 per cent of the projects have been completed in five cities, namely, . Guwahati (25 per cent), Kochi (31 per cent), Jaipur (34 per cent), Ludhiana (39 per cent) and Jabalpur (43 per cent). On the other hand, 80 per cent of the projects in Chennai, Indore and Surat are nearing completion.

Of the total number of projects allocated by the mission, approximately 46 per cent have been completed so far. This is a huge improvement from 2019 when only 11 per cent of all the projects were completed. At that time, not a single project was completed in 28 cities. In 2022, however, every city has at least one project that has been completed.

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