Agra gets 24th spot in smart city rankings

The Agra Municipal Corporation (AMC) has been ranked 24th among 87 smart cities in the country. The rankings were released by the Union ministry of Housing and Urban Development. While AMC was declared second in Uttar Pradesh, out of its 10 smart cities, Varanasi stood at the first place. Agra was selected in the smart city project only in the second round in 2016. Soon after Agra’s selection in the list of smart cities, a special purpose vehicle (SPV) was constituted to plan, apprise, approve, release funds and evaluate development works. Named the ‘Agra Smart City Limited’, the SPV is headed by the Agra divisional commissioner. Nagpur, with a score of 259.9, topped the list, closely followed by Vadodara with 195.31 marks. Ahmedabad came in third with a score of 190.96. Officials at the ministry said that rankings were based on the expenditure, project implementation and performance of civic bodies in the past four years. Of the total 99 smart cities in India, 12 were not assessed this time since the third list of cities was released late.