‘Chosen’ cities await govt nod for makeover

Even as the much-hyped Urban Renewal Mission awaits the Cabinet’s nod to start operations, at least 60 cities have been identified by t...

Even as the much-hyped Urban Renewal Mission awaits the Cabinet’s nod to start operations, at least 60 cities have been identified by the Urban Development Ministry to receive Central assistance to refurbish themselves.

The cities have been chosen, interestingly, not by their strategic location in a region or their importance in terms of economy and commerce, but their ‘‘population’’.

The cities have been placed in three categories. The first includes the seven mega-cities which are to get an international-level face-lift, 28 others, including state capitals, with million-plus population are in the second category to receive Central aid, and another 25 have been marked in the third category, with population of less than one million.

Therefore, Faridabad in Haryana — with a population of 10.56 million — and Meerut in UP, with 11.61 population, come within the Central radar, while satellite townships like Noida and Gurgaon don’t. Of course, the states would have the option to junk one city in favour of another of their choice.

Patna, meanwhile, tops the list of cities for the Mission, but no other city in the state is worth Centre’s attention. On the other hand, politically crucial UP has five cities — Lucknow, Allahabad, Agra, Varanasi and Kanpur. For Maharashtra, Nagpur, Pune and Nasik have been identified.

The population matrix has worked in favour of Kerala’s commercial hub Kochi, which will get more aid than the state capital Thiruvananthapuram, which is under the third category.

By the same logic, two cities in Punjab — Ludhiana and Amritsar — become more deserving than common capital Chandigarh..

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Two cities each from Tamil Nadu (Madurai, Coimbatore), Jharkhand (Jamshedpur, Dhanbad) and AP (Visakhapatnam and Vijayawada) have also been included.

There is windfall for Gujarat. Not only has Ahmedabad made it to the A-list of mega-cities (Chief Minister Narendra Modi was so ecstatic that he called a press conference to thank the Centre) three other cities — Rajkot, Surat and Vadodara – have made it to the other categories for Central aid. Even Madhya Pradesh has three cities — Bhopal Indore, Jabalpur as compared to West Bengal’s lone Asansol. The population factor has pushed the cities of the North-East, including Guwahati, into the third category.

But the only hitch is though lists and even applications for funds from states have piled up, the Central Coordination Committee, which would implement the Mission, is yet to be formed.