PM Modi's US visit: US to help India develop three smart cities Allahabad, Ajmer and Visakhapatnam

WASHINGTON: In a boost to India's 100 smart city programme, the US will help India in developing three such cities apart from joining hands with civil society and authorities to provide clean water and sewage facilities in 500 cities in the country.

The three cities are Allahabad, Ajmer and Visakhapatnam. This announcement was made after the talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and President Barack Obama here yesterday.

The Indian government plans to develop 100 smart cities and in this regard an allocation of Rs 7,060 crore was proposed in the Union Budget.

While presenting the Budget for 2014-15, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley had said the Prime Minister has a vision of developing 100 smart cities as satellite towns of larger cities and by modernising the existing mid-sized cities.

"With development reaching an increasingly large number of people, the pace of migration from the rural areas to the cities is increasing," Jaitley had said.

Wounding up his whirlwind five-day US visit yesterday, Prime Minister Narendra Modi "thanked" America and called his trip a highly "successful and satisfactory" one. P