These are the twenty smart cities !

The government on Thursday announced the names of the first 20 urban areas that will be developed as smart cities. The urban development ministry had received proposal for 97 cities from the state governments out of which 20 have been selected.

" Implementation of smart cities will showcase integrating planning. The investment of Rs 50,802 crores has been proposed in selected smart cities and town during the five year period," said minister of urban development Venkaiah Naidu. He also added " A consortium of Indian companies was chosen for plan of nine cities from the 20 cities."

The selected cities will be equipped with basic infrastructure, efficient urban mobility and public transport, IT connectivity and e-governance mechanism. In the future government plans to develop 40 cities as smart cities.

Following is the list of the  20 smart cities:

1. Bhubaneshwar 
2. Pune
3. Jaipur
4. Surat
5. Kochi
6. Ahmedabad
7. Jabalpur
8. Vishakapatnam
9. Sholapur
10. Davangere
11. Indore
12. New Delhi ( New Delhi municipal council area)
13. Coimbatore
14. Kakinda
15. Belagavi
16. Udaipur
17. Guwahati
18. Chennai
19. Ludhiana
20. Bhopal

The Centre has shown a lot of interest in developing such smart cities all over the country. It believes that such cities if given the proper services can boost the economy to quite an extent .