NEW DELHI: Hardeep Singh Puri, Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India announced on Monday, that all the 100 smart cities will have Integrated Command and Control Centers by August 15, this year. Out of those 100, work in 80 of them has already been completed.
The announcement was made by Puri at the inaugural session of the three-day ‘Smart Cities, Smart Urbanization’ conference being held at Surat, Gujarat as part of the Center’s initiative ‘Azadi ka Amrit Mahotsav’. The Smart Cities Mission (SCM) was launched by the Center in 2015, wherein 100 cities were chosen from all over the country, the development of which would serve as a benchmark for urban development. The SCM was initiated to meet the growing challenges of urbanization in India. The next step, according to Puri, is turning this into a movement.
The three-day conference from 18-20 April, 2022, is organized by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs in collaboration with Surat Smart City Corporation Development Ltd. Dignitaries from the Center and states, as well as representatives of smart city projects across the country were present. An award ceremony on the first day was held for the winners of the India Smart Cities’ Awards Projects 2020.