In a major development, the Uttar Pradesh has decided to provide Rs 50 crore fund to seven municipal corporations for the next five years under the union government’s Smart City project.
The decision took place in a recently held cabinet meeting chaired by the CM Yogi Adityanath.
Elaborating on the above development, Shrikant Sharma state government spokesperson said, “The government has decided to provide Rs 50 crores per year to the municipal corporations of Ayodhya, Mathura-Vrindavan, Meerut, Ghaziabad, Gorakhpur, Firozbad and Shahjahanpur for the next five years under the Smart City mission.”
Uttar Pradesh has a total of 17 municipal corporations. Besides these 7, the 10 others namely Lucknow, Varanasi, Kanpur, Allahabad, Agra, Aligarh, Jhansi, Bareilly, Saharanpur, and Moradabad have already been selected under the Smart City project. The work on the infrastructure development in these cities has started by the civic bodies.
Under the smart city project, the central government has planned to develop 100 smart cities across the country making them citizen-friendly and sustainable. The development work is being carried out under the Union Ministry of Urban Development in collaboration with the state governments of the respective cities.
The project is a five-year development program in which financial aid will be given by both central and state governments to the cities. To implement the project in the right direction, each city has to form a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), headed by a full-time CEO.