Centre has cleared record Rs 67,523 crore for urban infra in Maharashtra: Venkaiah Naidu

Mumbai: The Narendra Modi government at the Centre has approved a total investment of Rs67,523 crore to improve urban infrastructure in Maharashtra in three years, Union minister for urban development, housing, and urban poverty alleviation Venkaiah Naidu said on Tuesday.

Naidu said this was the highest investment in urban infrastructure approved for any Indian state in three years of the Modi government. The investment approved for Maharashtra accounted for more than 15% of the total investment of Rs4.35 trillion in the country in three years, he said.

Naidu was addressing a press conference after a two-day review of urban infrastructure, affordable housing, and sanitation projects being implemented in the state with central assistance. Maharashtra chief minister Devendra Fadnavis was also present.

In these project approvals worth Rs67,523 crore, central assistance of Rs8,712 crore had been sanctioned to Maharashtra, he added.

The approved investments include Rs19,100 crore for seven smart cities in Maharashtra, the highest in any Indian state. “Around 218 projects are under implementation and tendering in Pune, Solapur, Kalyan-Dombivli, Nagpur, Nashik, Thane and Aurangabad which are among the 60 smart cities selected. All these seven cities are setting up integrated command and control centres to improve service delivery and Pune and Nagpur would become the first cities in the country on 25th of this month to actually operationalize such centres to mark the second anniversary of the ‘Smart City’ project,” Naidu said.

An investment of Rs20,100 crore has been approved for Nagpur and Pune metros which is 42% of the total investment of Rs48,000 crore approved for metro projects in the country in three years.

“In the next five to six years, Maharashtra would have operational metro projects with a total length of 360km spread over nine metro corridors. A total investment of Rs1.4 trillion would flow into these metro projects and increase the number of daily metro users to about 10 million per day,” Naidu said.

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