Agartala ranks no. 1 among 10 smart cities of Northeast India

Guwahati: Tripura's capital city Agartala has been ranked first amongst the ten smart cities in the North Eastern Region after it scaled up from 76 to 54 in the national rankings of the 100 smart cities of India.

Chief Minister of Tripura, Biplab Kumar Deb sharing the news on Twitter, wrote, "Proud to share that Agartala has ranked top among 10 smart cities of the NE region. The national ranking of Agartala among the 100 Smart Cities has also improved to 56 from 74 (sic)."

He also appreciated the efforts of all employees and officials under Agartala Smart City Limited for this achievement and their hard work.

Government of Tripura informed that the success of Agartala Smart City in speeding up the project sanctioning, tendering and implementation has been appreciated by the Secretary, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India during the review of the Northeastern states recently.

A total of 80 projects costing Rs.1,479 crores have been taken up by the Agartala Smart City aiming overall development of the city. Till July 2020, 100% of projects have been tendered by the Smart City Mission team. Work orders have been issued for 54% value of the projects taken up so far. Central Government has sanctioned Rs 196 crores while the State Government has released Rs 50 crores to the Agartala Smart City Limited. To date, a total of Rs 172 crores have been spent under the project.

In order to speed up its implementation, the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs has released an additional Rs 49 crores to Agartala Smart City in July 2020.

One of the first projects taken up by Agartala Smart City Mission was to reduce the water stagnation problem in Central city during the monsoon.

The rankings of other northeastern cities are as follows: Namchi, Sikkim (59), Aizwal, Mizoram (75), Kohima, Nagaland (79), Gangtok, Sikkim (80), Guwahati, Assam (83), Itanagar, Arunachal Pradesh (89), Shillong, Meghalaya (92), Imphal, Manipur (93), and Pasighat, Arunachal Pradesh (98).

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