Rae Bareli, Hyderabad and Srinagar out of smart city race

NEW DELHI: Congress president Sonia Gandhi's home turf Rae Bareli, newly-formed Telangana’s state capital Hyderabad and Srinagar are out of the smart city race.

While Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao decided against rooting for Hyderabad in the first phase of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pet project, Gandhi's Rae Bareli got stuck in the Centre-state tussle. The Smart City Mission envisages developing 100 Indian cities into smart cities over the next five years. The 100 cities chosen have been distributed among the states and union territories on the basis of equitable criteria. The formula gives equal weightage to urban population of the state and the number of statutory towns. In the first round of competition, 20 out of the 100 cities would be chosen. The remaining would improve on their smart city plans and compete again.

Telangana had decided to develop Hyderabad into a smart city. However, in December Rao withdrew the capital city and decided to send an alternate plan in the second round. Gandhi's turf is a highly political story. Uttar Pradesh has to develop 13 smart cities. While it could choose 12 cities in the intra-state competition, Gandhi's Rae Bareli and Meerut, a BJP constituency, were tied for the 13th spot.

The state lobbed the ball in Centre's court and first asked it to increase the state’s tally to 13 and then made the choice in favour of Rae Bareli. However, the urban development ministry has refused to play ball and asked the state to make the choice and explain the reason for choosing one over the other. For the time being the matter seems to be stuck.

Jammu and Kashmir government is facing a similar problem. The state has been allotted a quota of one. The state has refused to make the choice between Jammu and Srinagar and has asked the urban development ministry to increase its share to two. With the ministry not entertaining any increase in quota, the matter is back to the state government.

The first round now has 97 instead of 100 smart cities in round 1.