Major cities vie for Smart City Project

THIRUVANANTHAPURAM: A tough ‘City Challenge Competition’ has been launched among the Corporations in the state to qualify for the Centre’s ambitious Smart City scheme, which aims at improving the living conditions of citizens. 

Thiruvananthapuram, Kozhikode and Kochi are the frontrunners for the elite Smart City tag and the cities have to qualify themselves through city-challenge criteria including sanitation, clean water, power, greenery and ratio between revenue and expenditure.

A senior official of the Urban Affairs Department said that every state should pick a city for the scheme. In Kerala, the State is likely to choose Kochi because it is already slated as a ‘metro’.

“Selection of the city alone will not help it enter into the list. Around seven cities from the state were in the 100 cities shortlisted for the programme already and now the Centre was bringing down the number of cities for the scheme to 20. The Centre will allot Rs 100 crores for each smart city annually for a period of five years,” said the official.

However, many officials feel that even if the state picked one city, it would be tough to enter the list as Kerala is not a priority state for the Centre.

As per the concept note, a smart city should be able to create employment opportunities, attract investments, have cost effective health care, quality education and citizen friendly governance.

The government has directed all City Corporations to submit the application for the smart cities from which one or two cities would be proposed at the Centre.