Terming the initiatives as a “new beginning” in the urban sector, Naidu said, “I am happy to see urban local bodies rediscover themselves, identifying gaps and coming out with strategies for correction.

Smart City Mission has caught the imagination of harassed urban people.

A new beginning has been made.

Now the task is to collectively succeed on the execution front to make urban areas more livable and conducive to business and economic activity.”

Under the new urban missions launched, the union government will extend an assistance of about Rs 4 lakh to states and urban local bodies during the next 7 years as against central assistance of only Rs 38,000 crore released under the 10-year-long JNNURM.

After holding extensive stakeholder consultations last year to conceptualise new urban initiatives, AMRUT, Smart City Mission and PMAY (Urban) took off the ground this year.

States and UTs have nominated 98 cities for developing as smart cities after the first round of intra-state competition under ‘City Challenge’ and Smart City Plans for 86 have been approved by respective states and UTs.

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So far, construction of 19 lakh individual household toilets and over one lakh community and public toilet seats have been taken up.

Door-to-door collection of solid waste has been reported in 42 per cent of the 78,000 urban wards in the country.

UD Ministry also took up several Delhi specific initiatives.