NDTV - Smart City Internship and Fellowship programmes launched along with new central schemes for 25 cities

Jul 18,2018

25 cities — Greater Visakhapatnam, Guwahati, Vadodara, Indore, Chennai, Bengaluru, Thiruvananthapuram, Warangal, Pune, Varanasi, Jaipur, Amritsar, Patna, Faridabad, Bhubaneswar, Ranchi, Raipur, Panaji, Shimla, New Kolkata, Srinagar, Dehradun, Aizawl, Gangtok and Imphal – have been chosen to receive a central assistance of Rs 2 crore each for area-based urban infrastructure expansion under a new scheme launched by Union Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri. The funding under this Local Area Plan (LAP) and Town Plan Schemes (TPS) will be released in three installments: 20 percent at the time of submission of preliminary proposal, 40 percent during submission of draft plan and remaining 40 percent during submission of final plan.

The Minister also launched the Smart Cities Fellowship and Internship programmes, to provide the youth of the country with an opportunity to experience various aspects of urban planning and governance. The Fellowship programme would engage, for a period of one to three years, 30 young graduates, postgraduates and Ph.D-holders in the fields of urban planning, urban design, engineering, information and technology, urban mobility, finance, social sector, and environmental issues. Fellows would be working with the Mission Director, Smart Cities in the ministry or with CEOs of selected smart cities. For the Internship programme, students pursuing undergraduate, graduate, postgraduate degrees would be selected as interns (unpaid) for a period of 6 to 12 weeks, to help implementation of smart city projects at various states of implementation.