As per the Union ministry of housing and urban affairs data, Karnataka has completed 550 projects worth Rs 5,263.6 crore out of 828 projects worth Rs 17,533.5 crore.

Of the 262 ongoing projects of Rs 10,799.8 crore, another 15 of Rs 1,273.9 crore are at the tendering stage. Only one project in Mangaluru of Rs 196.3 crore is stuck at the detailed project report (DPR) stage.

As per a mid-March review by the Union ministry of housing and urban affairs, Karnataka has executed more than 66% of its 828 Smart City projects spread across seven places, including Bengaluru, while another 262 projects are in progress.

Urban development minister Byrathi Basavaraj told the media that more than 70% of Smart City works have been completed, and very few projects are remaining. The minister could not provide the break-up of projects instantly.

Rakesh Singh, the additional chief secretary of the urban development department, told the media that as per the Centre’s guidelines, all projects need to be finished by March 2023. One sports complex in Hubballi and a Mangaluru project may take some time.

Singh said that 35% to 50% of the projects involved modification of roads and took a lot of time as shifting of utilities posed a challenge, which may have caused inconvenience to people, but the work was quite challenging, and even the contractors were not very conversant as to what they were doing. In most projects work is progressing as per schedule.

The Centre, which launched the Smart Cities Mission (SCM) on June 25, 2015, has so far selected 100 smart cities via four rounds of competition between January 2016 and June 2018.

As of March 2022, the 100 smart cities have tendered out 6,928 projects of more than Rs 1.9 lakh crore; work orders have been issued in 6,282 projects worth more than Rs 1.6 lakh crore, and 3,576 worth Rs 59,958 crore have been achieved.

According to the guidelines, the government will provide financial aid to the extent of Rs 48,000 crore over five years, and an equal amount on a matching basis will be contributed by the Karnataka government and urban local body (ULB).

As of early March, the government had released Rs 29,213.6 crore for 100 smart cities, of which Rs 25,177.6 crore had been used.

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