New Delhi, June 25 (ANI): Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Thursday launched the Smart Cities Mission, Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation at Vigyan Bhavan.
As per reports, while the Rs 48,000 crore Smart City mission is aimed at applying smart solutions to improve infrastructure and service delivery in the cities, the AMRUT mission, worth Rs 50,000 crore, aims at infrastructure development of 500 cities with the population of over one lakh.
The Prime Minister explained that for the first time in India, a challenge was being floated, in which the citizens of urban India could contribute in the formulation of development visions of their cities. Those cities which were able to competitively meet the required parameters would be developed as smart cities. Hence, the Prime Minister said, this competitive mechanism would end the top-down approach, and lead to people-centric urban development.
The Prime Minister said that urbanization should be viewed as an opportunity, and urban centres should be viewed as growth engines. He said if this had been done 25-30 years ago, it would have led to good results today, but better late than never. He said schemes which had a clear vision and were people-centric, were the need of the hour. He called for replication of best practices from across the country. In particular, the Prime Minister mentioned Hyderabad’s tax collection system, Karnataka’s efforts for solid waste management, and Chhattisgarh’s work to eliminate open defecation.
Watch the Video below
Ventuno