New Urban Development Schemes

• The Centre has launched three initiatives for urban development — Smart Cities Mission, Housing for All and Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT).

AMRUT:

• Under this scheme, Central Govt. will provide 30% of the overall cost, if the city has a population of more than 10 lakh; and 50% if under 10 lakh.
• While states have been asked to identify smart cities to be developed, 38 cities in the region, including 17 in Punjab, 19 in Haryana and one each in J&K and Himachal Pradesh, have been selected under AMRUT. 
• UP leads the pack, as they can nominate 64 cities under this project.
• Of the 500 cities to be rejuvenated over five years under the AMRUT programme, 476 have been selected and these include: Abohar, Amritsar, Barnala, Batala, Bathinda, Ferozepur, Hoshiarpur, Jalandhar, Khanna, Ludhiana, Malerkotla, Moga, Muktsar, Patiala, Pathankot, Phagwara and SAS Nagar of Punjab.

SMART CITIES:

• Rs 48,000 crore would be spent on creating 100 smart cities across India. Based on the population and area, a fix number has been allocated for each state. Hence, Uttar Pradesh, the most populated state will get 13 smart cities, meanwhile Tamil Nadu will receive 12 smart cities. Maharashtra will get 10 cities, while Karnataka and Gujarat will get 6 each.
• West Bengal and Rajasthan has been allocated 4 smart cities; Bihar, Andhra Pradesh and Punjab three each and Odisha, Haryana, Telangana and Chhattisgarh will get 2 smart cities each.
• Jammu and Kashmir, Kerala, Jharkhand, Assam, Himachal, Goa, Arunachal and Chandigarh, along with National Capital New Delhi will get one smart city each.
• A ‘City Challenge Competition’ will be held among all nominated cities, to determine the most eligible of them for conversion into smart cities.

PRADHAN MANTRI AWAS YOJANA:

• The third project is the ‘Housing for All by 2022’ scheme, wherein more than 2 crore homes would be build across all the urban locations in the next 7 years. Central Govt. will provide a grant of Rs 1 lakh to Rs 2.5 lakh for every home.
• The vision is to provide a home to everyone living in an urban city.
• Women, SC/STs and people from Economically Weaker Sections (EWS) would be the main beneficiaries of this urban housing project.
• Indian real estate market, which has been experiencing a sluggish growth rate since last couple of years, will be certainly delighted with the launch of these Govt. sponsored urbanization projects as more than Rs 4 lakh crore is expected to be invested directly or indirectly into the real estate market, on a national level.

By: Vishal