Railway and Ministries
of Urban Development have joined hands to develop Railway stations and
surrounding areas to be redeveloped under Smart City Plans. Both the ministries are working on the concept
that development of smart cities since there can’t be a smart city without a
smart railway station and hence memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed
today in this regard by the Ministries of Urban Development and Railways in the
presence of Shri M.Venkaiah Naidu and Shri Suresh Prabhu.
Shri Naidu suggested
that to begin with 10 cities could be taken up for the proposed redevelopment
with the involvement of National Buildings Construction Corporation(NBCC) which
has successfully executed redevelopment projects on self-financing basis.
These
cities are : Sarai Rohilla (Delhi), Bhubaneswwar, Lucknow, Varnasi, Jaipur,
Kota, Thane, Margao(Goa), Tirupati and Puducherry. This was agreed to by
Railway Minister.
Minister of Railways
Shri Suresh Prabhu said that redevelopment work of Habibganj railway station
has already been awarded and plans for Anand Vihar (Delhi), Surat, Bijwasan and
Gandhinagar are in advanced stage. He said that several countries like Germany,
France, Japan, South Korea, UK and Belgium have showed interest in redevelopment
and a Round Table of domestic and overseas bankers will be organized next week
to discuss financing of these redevelopment projects.
Smart City Plans of
some cities have already included area based development surrounding railway
stations. These include; Bhubaneswar, Thane and Solapur (Maharashtra), Kakinada
(Andhra Pradesh), Ahmedabad, Ajmer, Hubli-Dharwad (Karnataka).
Smart City Plans of
some other cities may potentially impact city railway station and allied
services. These include; Jaipur, Kochi, Jabalpur, Visakhapatnam, Indore, Pune,
Bhopal, Chennai etc.
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