Govt. draws flak from CPI (M) for making NDMC-Delhi smart city

Senior Communist Party of India (Marxist) leader Brinda Karat on Saturday lashed out at the Centre for considering only the 'NDMC area in Delhi' for the smart city initiative, saying that such a proposal showed 'anti-democratic and anti-poor' character of the government.

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She said that those cities, which have been deprived of development all these years, should be given priority.

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"The proposal on smart cities which has come, that only NDMC area in Delhi, where Mr. Modi and his Ministers live, will made into a smart city. Only that area will get all the benefits and all the government money, which in any case is being spent on them," Karat told ANI here.

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"If a city is to be made a smart city, then undoubtedly those cities which have been kept in the darkness should get the first priority for government funds," she added.

The Congress Party on Friday alleged that the Centre had insulted both Bihar and Uttar Pradesh after none of the cities in both the states could make it to the first Smart City contest.

Populous states like Uttar Pradesh and Bihar and Jharkhand have missed the Centre's Smart City initiative. Odisha's capital Bhubaneswar tops the list of 20 cities as part of the first batch of the Smart City initiative that will attract investment of over Rs 50,000 crore to leap into a modern and dynamic landscape.

The Centre will give each city Rs 500 crore over five years under the Modi government's smart city mission. The Centre had pledged to spend Rs 48,000 crore in five years to elevate 100 localities to the status of smart cities.

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Pune, Jaipur, Surat, Kochi, Ahmedabad, Jabalpur, Visakhapatnam, Solapur, Davanagere, Indore, Coimbatore, Kakinada, Belagavi, Udaipur, Guwahati, Chennai, Ludhiana and Bhopal are the other cities selected in the first batch.