New Town becomes first urban centre to be selected for Smart City scheme

Kolkata: New Town has become the first urban centre from West Bengal to be selected for the Centre's ambitious Smart City scheme.
The urban development ministry on Tuesday declared a list of 13 cities under the second phase of the scheme that also includes Lucknow, Bhagalpur, Dharamsala, Chandigarh, Faridabad, Raipur, Ranchi, Warangal, Agartala, Imphal, Port Blair and Panaji.
The 13 cities were selected from a pool of 23 participating centres from an equal number of states. Together, they have come up with investm-ent proposals worth Rs 30,000 crore. The new list takes the total number of cities under the scheme to 33.
Aimed at transforming urban life, the selected cities aims at providing uninterrupted power and water supplies, robust internet connectivity, e-governance, intelligent traffic solutions (ITS), besides improving core infrastructure.
With the inclusion of New Town in the list, the New Town Kolkata Development Authority (NKDA) would now get funds from the Centre to develop the township's infrastructure. The NKDA had worked overtime to upgrade its plan after the township failed to get picked by the Centre in the first phase. The authorities held consultation with IIT experts, representatives of the C40 Cities Alliance and several other stakeholders to chalk up the upgraded plan.
The new plan stresses on developing a modern urban eco-system with requisite social amenities, an intelligent transport system, better public transport, dedicated pedestrian footpaths and bicycle tracks and above all smart security solutions.