Bihar has paid the price for not electing the BJP in the Assembly elections, feel politicians.
Not a single city from the state could find a place in the list of first 20 out of 98 cities under Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s flagship Smart City scheme announced on Thursday. Anti- BJP forces claimed that a close observation of the list of 20 cities indicate that a large section of the qualifying cities is those from states either ruled by the NDA or those awaiting elections. The list does not include even a single city from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Bengal, which are ruled by non-BJP parties.
Deputy chief minister Tejaswi tweeted: No city from UP,Bihar & WB included in #SmartCities list. PM talks abt “Team India” & boycott large,important and populous states..Strange
The three cities from Bihar, which were shortlisted in the first stage of the Smart City mission included Biharsharif, Bhagalpur and Muzaffarpur. However, none were mentioned by Union urban development minister Venkaiah Naidu on Thursday when he announced the name of first 20 smart cities, which would receive funds of Rs 100 crore per annum over the next five years.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi's own constituency Varanasi was at the bottom of the pile. With 97 cities in competition, Varanasi managed to get a 96th rank.
Naidu claimed that two lists of 40 and 38 cities, respectively, will be included in the next two years. Cities, which were not included in the first list, can make improvements in their performance to get included in the next two lists.
The Grand Alliance criticised the Narendra Modi government for ignoring Bihar.
Urban development minister Maheshwar Hazari said: “This is sheer injustice to Bihar by the Modi government. They did not include even a single city in the scheme. We had submitted Smart City plans for Bhagalpur, Muzaffarpur and Biharsharif as necessitated under the scheme.
All three cities were fulfilling the criteria for getting selected in the first list but the central government intentionally
ignored Bihar.”
BJP leader Sushil Kumar Modi, however, said: “The selection was done in a transparent manner. There was no pick and choose. There had been a competition among cities.”
M.K. Pandey, a Patna-based specialist in urban development affairs, said: “Cities like Solapur (Maharashtra), Devangere (Karnataka) and Kakinada (Andhra Pradesh) and others are not only geographically smaller than Patna but their population is also lower. I am sceptical whether the municipal bodies in such cities would have accounting practices and other resources to effectively utilise funds of Rs 100 crore, which would be given to them on a yearly basis. I am disappointed with the exclusion of Bihar, Bengal and Uttar Pradesh,” said.
Sources in the ministry of urban development claimed that the broad criteria for selection of 20 smart cities were city vision, cost effectiveness, credibility of implementation, innovation and others.
What went wrong
As necessitated by the city challenge competition in the first stage, every state was required to shortlist cities, which they were to be nominated for inclusion in the overall list of smart cities. Accordingly, the Bihar government initially shortlisted 17 cities based on the criteria and guidelines prescribed under the competition.
During the evaluation of the cities for a final nomination, Muzaffarpur (86.11 per cent) and Bhagalpur and Biharsharif with 77.78 per cent each, fulfilled the criteria for selection. Patna had ranked third from bottom, scoring 35 per cent — above Buxar and Sitamarhi, which scored 31.25 per cent each. The state capital had scored zero in eight out of the 15 criteria for selection.
