Development of 100 “smart cities” will be the key component of a new Urban Mission to be launched by the BJP Government to augment infrastructure and transportation facilities in existing and to-be-built cities, replacing the ambitious JNNURM piloted by the previous UPA regime. The BJP government’s decision not to extend the tenure of the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM), launched in 2005 by the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, was officially announced last week, though there were clear indications ever since the new dispensation assumed office. Development of 100 “smart cities” is one of the key programmes that the BJP Government has given thrust to in the Union Budget by allotting a little more than Rs 7,000 crore for the purpose and has identified a couple of towns for upgradation. In a written reply to Rajya Sabha last week, Union urban development minister M. Venkaiah Naidu said the scheme for JNNURM was closed on March 31, 2014, in the clearest indication that the Government was in no mood to continue with the programmee by granting an extension. Officials in the ministry told this newspaper that the new scheme to be launched for development of existing cities and to-be-created cities will focus on modern concept like using GIS, providing the best transport facilities and making them cleaner by providing solid and liquid waste management system. Officials in the ministry along with experts are working on the contours of the new “smart cities” programmee and the facilities that would be made available in those cities. The ministry has asked the National Institute of Urban Affairs to work on the project with focus on smartness and sustainability while building them. The officials said the “smart cities” will be the main component of the new scheme as several other features and facilities would also be made available for existing cities to upgrade their infrastructure especially transportation facilities. Finance minister Arun Jaitley had announced three towns on the Chennai-Bengaluru Industrial Corridor — Ponneri in Tamil Nadu, Krishnapatanam in Andhra and Tumkur in Karnataka — would be developed as “smart cities”.