Shillong out from smart city race

FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT

SHILLONG, May 24: Shillong, known as the Scotland of the East, has once again missed out on the smart cities race. Shillong along with the other cities who missed out the second time can have a third try when these cities submit their revised smart city plans for evaluation in the second round of regular competition underway by the end of June.

On Tuesday, the Centre announced 13 more smart cities with Lucknow topping the list of winners. The Fast Track competition was conducted for 23 cities.

Announcing the winners at a media conference on the occasion of two years of the Government in office, Minister of Urban Development and Housing & Urban Poverty Alleviation M Venkaiah idu said that the cities that participated in the competition improved the quality of smart city plans by up to over 25 per cent to become eligible for selection.

With the selection of these 13 cities, 25 states and union territories are now covered under Smart City Mission.

These 13 cities were selected based on the marks scored by them in the Fast Track competition and the bench marks set by the top performers in the first round of Smart City Challenge competition in which the first 20 cities were selected from among 98 mission cities.

These 13 cities have substantially improved their smart city plans by addressing the deficiencies identified in the first round of competition by ensuring better profiling of respective cities in terms of infrastructure gaps and baseline service levels, ensuring consistency between citizens’ aspirations and action plans, more feasible resource mobilization plans and coordited and integrated picture of how individual projects will contribute to area level changes.