NEW DELHI: About Rs 800 crore will be up for grabs for cities that can compete for 15 best projects in four areas including sustainable mobility, public open spaces, urban governance and organisational innovation in low-income settlements.

The Centre on Monday also announced a grant of Rs 2 crore assistance each for 25 cities including more than half a dozen state capitals for planned urban expansion.

Launching the new schemes for cities under the two flagship missions, housing and urban affairs minister Hardeep Singh Puri said the French lending agency, AFD, will provide 100 million Euros (approximately Rs 800 crore) for the 15 projects as a grant. The repayment of the principal and interest would be equally shared by the Central government and states. “Each awarded project will benefit from a grant ranging from Rs 20 crore to Rs 80 crore,” an official release said.

This is for the first time any urban project will be selected through ‘challenge mode’. The duration of the programme will be three years till 2020- 21. Puri also said in a first the government will also provide Smart Cities fellowship and internship programmes, which will provide the youth an opportunity to experience various aspects of urban planning and governance.

“We want the best of brains from Indian and foreign universities to avail this opportunity and come out with path-breaking innovations. We will also give cities the digital payment award to promote ease of living for urban people by promoting digital payments and encouraging smart cities to adopt innovative digital payment initiatives,” the minister said.

Announcing the list of cities, which will get the Rs 2 crore central assistance each for developing the Local Area Plan (LAP) and Town Planning Scheme (TPS), Puri said the focus of these initiatives is to enable planning for developing infrastructure in the brownfield areas, which are already developed, and Greenfield areas, which are the periphery of the city that is prone to haphazard growth and development. The cities that will be covered including Faridabad, Indore, Vadodara, Bengaluru, Chennai, Varanasi, Pune, Patna , Bhubaneswar, Shimla, Srinagar and Dehradun.

The LAPs will be prepared for the existing areas or brownfield zones for their redeveloped and the Town Planning Schemes will be implemented for planned urban expansion in the peripheral greenfield areas. “Based on the formulation of LAPs and TPS by the city concerned, prioritization of urban infrastructure projects would be taken up,” the ministry said. These plans will be completed in one year.

