Second list of 40 smart cities soon: Minister

Chennai

The Smart City idea had been catching up and the list of 20 cities had already been declared, another 40 more cities would be added to the second list out of the planned 100 smart cities, the minister said in his address at the Engineers Conclave organised by the Indian National Academy of Engineering in association with the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras. 

The union minister said that Chief Minister J Jayalalithaa had requested the union ministry to include Srirangam in the heritage cities project. Already Kancheepuram and Veilankanni from Tamil Nadu were part of it. 

“It is difficult to make a city smart. We have the recent example of floods in Chennai, Bengaluru, Navi Mumbai, Hyderabad and Gurugram. It’s a challenge to all of us, especially to engineers, architects and politicians. The fault does not lie only with engineers or architects but with politicians also because encroachment has become order of the day and unauthorised construction have closed all drains, rivulets and nallahs,” he said. 

Pointing out that the civic system needs to be revisited as it had collapsed in certain parts of the country, the union minister said that as urban development minister he was concerned as the Centre could only advice or plan, whereas the urban local body and the state government needs to take action. 

Speaking about engineering education in the country, he wondered that engineering colleges had proliferated in the country like central warehousing godowns everywhere and produce lakhs of engineers. 

Vinay Sheel Oberoi, Secretary (Higher Education) in Human Resource Development ministry in his address pointed out that in 2014 there were 18.32 lakh B.Tech and its equivalent undergraduate degree seats in the country of which 8.2 lakh seats went vacant. Of these 2.7 lakh were from Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. 

“The sanctioned strength for technical education is 3.95 million seats but the enrolment was 2.13 million. Of the 2.13 million seats, the pass percentage was less than 60 per cent and the placement was 53 per cent,” he said.

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