The Union Government is gearing up to launch the Smart Cities project on September 1. It has asked the States and urban bodies to set up Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) to develop the respective cities into smart cities.

“In the first phase, we will take up 20 cities. The 100 cities that had been enlisted would have to compete to get a slot in the first list,” Union Minister for Urban Development M Venkaiah Naidu has said.

Addressing a press conference here on Saturday on the sidelines of a national conference on Smart Technologies, he said the Government would give ₹100 crore each to the cities.

“The States will have to match this amount. They must develop public-private partnerships to make the smart cities a success. They must be able to raise user charges for the services,” he said.

Each of these SPVs would be headed by a CEO and would work on the public-private partnership model.

“To make it to the first list of 20 cities, the cities must compete on different parameters such as sanitation, credit-worthiness and accountability,” he said.

Earlier, addressing the conference, he said the government intended to extend the programme further and make all the cities in the country ‘smart’. “What we are doing in the 100 cities is just a beginning,” he said.

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