Indore Wins The Smart City Competition, While Surat And Agra Come In Second And Third

Since the Central government began the competition, Indore has won the best “National Smart City Award” for excellent performance among the 100 smart cities in its fourth iteration. The second and third-placed cities are Surat and Agra, respectively.

On Friday, the results of the fourth India Smart Cities Award Contest (ISAC) for 2022 were made public. The results for 2021 could not be revealed the previous year due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The winners of the ISAC 2022 awards will be honoured by President Draupadi Murmu on September 27, 2023 in Indore, Madhya Pradesh.

Madhya Pradesh and Tamil Nadu have emerged as the two best-performing states among the states, with Rajasthan and Uttar Pradesh sharing third place. Chandigarh has the most crore out of all the Union Territories.

The NDMC area of Delhi, which is a municipal territory chosen for a Smart City and is under the control of the Central government, has not won any prizes in any of the 12 categories. According to sources, the NDMC didn’t even take part in the competition.

The Smart Cities Mission (SCM), which was introduced on June 25, 2015, aims to provide inhabitants with basic infrastructure, a healthy and sustainable environment, and a respectable standard of living through the use of “smart solutions.”

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The remaining 1,894 projects, totaling Rs 60,095 crore, will be finished by next June. Of the total projects proposed under SCM, 6,041 (76%) projects costing Rs 1.11 lakh crore have already been completed.

The Integrated Command and Control Centres (ICCC), which serve as the brain and nervous system for city operations employing technology for urban administration, have been established in each of the 100 smart cities that were chosen. According to the housing and urban affairs ministry, urban services have greatly improved in a variety of areas, including crime tracking, citizen safety and security, transportation management, solid waste management, water supply, and disaster management.

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The chosen smart towns have begun work on numerous initiatives in a variety of fields including smart governance, energy, water, sanitation, and public space revitalization.

For instance, 1,174 projects totaling Rs 24,047 crore have been completed in the field of smart transportation, and another 434 projects totaling Rs 15,940 crore are in progress. 573 initiatives in smart energy have been finished, and 94 more are in progress.

More than 1,162 projects totaling Rs 34,751 crore have been completed in the field of water supply, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH), while 333 more projects totaling Rs 18,716 crore are in progress. More than 1,063 public spaces worth Rs 6,403 crore have been built in the 100 Smart cities, and 260 further projects worth Rs 5,470 crore are in progress. In addition, 27 other Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects worth a total of Rs. 8,228 crore are in progress.

Another 267 projects are under progress, and 652 initiatives relating to economic infrastructure, like market reconstruction and start-up incubation centres, have already been finished. 679 projects have been completed and 153 are still in progress in the social infrastructure sector (health, education, housing, etc.).