organiser57d ago
India has completed the development of 31 Smart Cities under its flagship Smart Cities Mission, while 43 additional cities are nearing completion, according to information provided by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) in response to a Right to Information (RTI) query. The remaining 26 cities will require additional time to complete their transformation, the Ministry noted, underscoring the scale and complexity involved in implementing large-scale urban infrastructure reforms across diverse regions of the country. Launched in June 2015, the Smart Cities Mission was designed to improve the quality of urban life by strengthening infrastructure, ensuring efficient public service delivery, and promoting sustainable and technology-driven governance models across 100 selected cities. Originally conceived as a five-year programme beginning in 2016, the mission has since been extended three times, reflecting the challenges inherent in urban planning, land acquisition, coordination between agencies, and execution at the city level. Among the 31 cities declared ‘smart’ are Agartala, Agra, Bareilly, Bhopal, Chandigarh, Coimbatore, Indore, Pune, Surat, Udaipur and Varanasi, along with several others spanning different regions of the country. Data shared by the Ministry indicates that Indore emerged as the highest spender under the mission, completing 231 projects at a cost of Rs 3,751 crore. It was followed by Varanasi, which completed 117 projects costing Rs 3,342 crore, and Surat, which executed 87 projects amounting to Rs 2,694 crore. The Smart Cities Mission was implemented through a combination of Area-Based Development (ABD) projects, focusing on the redevelopment of specific urban zones and Pan-City initiatives, which leveraged technology to improve services across entire cities. Each participating city set up a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) to plan, approve and implement projects, enabling greater administrative autonomy and faster decision-making. As of May 2025, a total of 8,067 projects, accounting for 94 per cent of all sanctioned projects, had been completed across the 100 Smart Cities, the Ministry confirmed. One of the mission’s most visible outcomes has been the establishment of Integrated Command and Control Centres (ICCCs). All 100 Smart Cities now have fully operational ICCCs, which serve as central hubs for urban monitoring, traffic management, emergency response and public service coordination. In addition, over 84,000 CCTV surveillance cameras have been installed across these cities, significantly strengthening public safety, law enforcement capabilities and real-time urban governance. The Smart Cities Mission received a total Union Budget allocation of Rs 47,652 crore, of which 99.44 per cent had been disbursed by March 2025, indicating near-complete financial outlay by the Centre. Officials said the remaining work in unfinished cities is expected to be completed in a phased manner, with continued monitoring to ensure quality and sustainability of urban infrastructure. As India’s urban population continues to expand rapidly, the Smart Cities Mission remains one of the country’s most ambitious attempts to reimagine urban living, blending infrastructure, technology and governance to meet the demands of the future.
