JNNURM corpus to be increased

The Centre is planning to increase the corpus under the Jawharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM) to Rs 1,50,000 crore from Rs 1,00,000 crore at present.

Stating that the Cabinet’s approval was awaited, Minister of State for Urban Development Saugata Roy said the Centre’s contribution in the increase of Rs 50,000 lakh crore would be Rs 25,000 lakh crore.

The Centre, he said, had paid 50 per cent of the Rs 1 lakh crore JNNURM scheme started by it.

Roy said his ministry was looking for foreign funds to meet the resource gap and was negotiating for a $5 billion loan from the World Bank to develop Indian cities, though it was yet to be finalised.

He said of the $ 5 billion, $ 3.5 billion would be for infrastructure development and $ 1.5 billion for development of urban transport.

The scheme now covered 65 mission cities, along with their adjacent towns. “These schemes aim at improving urban infrastructure and governance through better water supply, sewerage, solid waste management, etc,” he said.

Replying to a question, Roy said some states had made significant progress, notably Gujarat and Andhra Pradesh, followed by Maharashtra and Tamil Nadu, while some like West Bengal and Delhi had fallen behind in terms of the implementation of JNNURM projects.