Tamil Nadu government submits plans for 12 smart cities to union urban development ministry

NEW DELHI: The Tamil Nadu government, which had sought time from the centre to has submitted its smart city plans because it was busy managing the floods in Chennai has now submitted plans for 12 smart cities in the state.

The union ministry of urban development had set the deadline of December 15, 2015 to submit the smart city plans.

The 12 cities and towns included in the smart city mission are Tiruchirapalli, Tirunelveli, Dindigul, Thanjavur, Tirupur, Salem, Vellore, Coimbatore, Madurai, Erode, Thoothukudi and Chennai.

With this, 97 cities out of the 98 included in the Smart City Mission have submitted smart city plans to the ministry of urban development. 85 cities had submitted their plans in time. Telangana government had sought more time to replace Hyderabad with another city. Uttar Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir are still to nominate one city each for inclusion in the Smart City Mission.

The ministry has also begun the process of evaluation of city level smart city plans by setting up three teams of two experts each. The plans received have been referred to them for evaluation in the second stage of the City Challenge competition.

At the end of the evaluation, the first batch of Smart Cities to be financed during this financial year would be announced. The ministry has set a cap of 20 such cities to be financed during this financial year and 40 each during the next two years.