Planned development of cities is necessary to manage the pressure of urbanization on the infrastructure and basic civic amenities in urban areas. Therefore, the urban areas of the state have been adopted as an independent unit, the urban local body. Uttar Pradesh has the largest number of urban local bodies in India. In the 734 urban local bodies of the state, there are 17 municipal corporations, 200 municipal councils and 517 Nagar Panchayats. The duty and responsibility of local bodies is to provide basic civic amenities such as clean drinking water supply, roads/streets, drainage, sanitation, garbage disposal, sewerage system, street lighting, parks, clean environment, etc. to the population.
The Hon’ble Prime Minister of India launched the Smart Cities Mission on 25th June 2015, to be implemented through the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affair, Government of India, with the objective to initially make 100 smart cities across India which will predominantly use Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) to develop, deploy, and promote sustainable development practices. 10 Central Smart Cities of Uttar Pradesh namely Agra, Aligarh, Bareilly, Jhansi, Kanpur, Lucknow, Moradabad, Prayagraj, Saharanpur and Varanasi, were selected in 5 rounds.
Subsequently, the Hon’ble Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh announced during the budget session for the year 2019-20 the extension of Smart City Mission to the remaining 7 Nagar Nigams namely Ayodhya, Firozabad, Ghaziabad, Gorakhpur, Mathura, Meerut and Shahjahanpur which were not covered under the Central Smart City Mission. These 7 cities were designated as State Smart Cities. Subsequently, the State Smart City Guidelines were issued vide GO No. 1170/Nau-9-2019-113J/19 dated 30/9/2019.
The Directorate of Smart Cities Mission has been setup under the Directorate of Local Bodies to oversee the work in the 17 Smart Cities which have been formed in the existing 17 Nagar Nigams of the state. Out of these 17, 10 Central Smart Cities are being managed through SPV (Special Purpose Vehicle) formed under the Companies Act 2013, while the remaining 7 State Smart Cities are directly managed by the respective Nagar Nigams.