Uttar Pradesh grabs top position in India's Smart Cities Award Contest 2020

Uttar Pradesh has been ranked as top performing state under the Smart Cities Mission’s India Smart Cities Award Contest 2020. Madhya Pradesh comes second on the list while Tamil Nadu grabbed the third position. Surat and Indore bagged the best award for their overall performance in 2020.

The best union territory award went to  Chandigarh.

These awards were announced on June 25 to mark six years of the three urban transformative missions of the Central government -- Smart Cities Mission (SCM), Atal Mission for Urban Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) and Pradhan Mantri Awas Yojana-Urban (PMAY-U), which were launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in 2015.

The event was presided by minister of housing and urban affairs Hardeep S. Puri and attended by  key urban stakeholders from Central and State Governments including principal Secretaries of states/UTs, municipal commissioners of cities, and MDs/CEOs of Smart Cities.

These awards were given across the themes of Social Aspects, Governance, Culture, Urban Environment, Sanitation, Economy, Built Environment, Water, Urban Mobility. Some interesting themes were added too this year for Sustainable Business model of ICCC and Innovation award specially in COVID Management.

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Indore and Surat won the City Award jointly this year for their overall development and Uttar Pradesh won the state award.

Under social aspect theme, Tirupati won the award for  Health Benchmark for Municipal Schools and Bhubaneshwar for Socially Smart Bhubaneswar. Tumakuru won the award for Digital Library Solution.

For governance, Vadodara received the first rank, followed by Thane and Bhubaneswar. Under the culture theme, the joint winners were the cities of Indore and Chandigarh, the ministry of housing and urban affairs said.

For urban environment, the joint winners were Bhopal and Chennai.

For sanitation, the joint winners were Joint Winners (Tirupati and Indore); For economy, Indore: Carbon Credit Financing Mechanism; for built environment Indore: Chappan Dukan. The COVID innovation award went to both Kalyan-Dombivali and Varanasi. The Smart Cities Leadership Award was given to Ahmedabad,Varanasi and Ranchi, the ministry said.

During the 6th Anniversary event, MoHUA announced the results of the India Smart Cities Awards Contest (ISAC) 2020. The results under the Data Maturity Assessment Framework (DMAF) and Climate Smart Cities Assessment Framework (CSCAF) were also released during the event. The event also saw the release of India Smart Cities Fellowship Report, the TULIP annual report, and knowledge products developed by National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA).

The Climate Smart Cities Assessment Framework (CSCAF) 2.0 was launched in September, 2020 with an aim to provide an overarching roadmap to formulate, implement and monitor urban climate actions in India. Intended as a tool for cities to evaluate their current performance and build on the same, the framework has 28 diverse indicators covering 96 data points across five thematic areas. 126 cities, including 100 Smart Cities and 26 cities with population over 500,000, participated in the 2020 assessment cycle.

The top 9 performing cities which have been awarded 4 star rating are Surat, Indore, Ahmedabad, Pune, Vijayawada, Rajkot, Visakhapatnam, Pimpri-Chinchwad and Vadodara.

Smart Cities Mission is a Mission aimed at bringing about a paradigm shift in the practice of urban development in the country. Of the total proposed projects under SCM, 5,890 projects (114% by number) worth Rs 1,78,500 crore (87% by value) have been tendered so far, work orders have been issued for 5,195 projects (101% by number) worth Rs 1,45,600 crore (71% by value). 2,655 projects (51% by number) worth Rs 45,000 crore (22% by value) have also been fully completed and are operational, the ministry said.

As on date, 69 Smart cities have developed and operationalised their Integrated Command and Control Centres (ICCCs) in the country. These operational ICCCs functioned as war-rooms for COVID management, and along with other smart infrastructure developed under the mission, helped cities in fighting the pandemic through information dissemination, improving communication, predictive analysis and supporting effective management, the ministry said.