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"LUCKNOW: Referring to selection of 13 cities from UP for smart city project, UP governor Ram Naik on Friday suggested to make total count 14 and select both Rae Bareli and Meerut which have tied for the 13th spot. Speaking at conference on “Developing Smart Cities: Imperatives and Challenges”, organized by the Lucknow Management Association in association with TOI, Naik said “13” was an inauspicious number to start any development work. “While names of 12 cities have already been finalised, there is a competition between Meerut and Rae Bareli for the 13th slot therefore both Meerut and Rae Bareli should be selected for the project,”Naik said. He also suggested to increase the number of cities selected in entire country to 101 from 98 at present as “101” is considered to be an auspicious number. Among 98 cities chosen across India for Smart City development, 12 are from UP -- Moradabad, Aligarh, Saharanpur, Bareilly, Jhansi, Kanpur, Allahabad, Lucknow, Varanasi, Ghaziabad, Agra and Rampur. There was a tie between Meerut and Rae Bareli for the 13th spot. Centre has already announced plans to launch ‘Smart Cities’ mission in the top 100 cities of country. The governor advised officials to add one more city and take the total count to 101 for same reason- auspiciousness attached to ‘101’. While department of urban development of state government applauded his advice, Ministry officials were of view that the mission is a team work of Centre and state government and both should pool in to make it a success. Sudhir Krishna, former secretary, Union ministry of urban development and one of the key speakers said, “The solution is state government can take up the responsibility of developing one smart city instead of depending of Central grants.” Centre is expected to release about Rs 500 crore to each city selected for smart development. Krishna added that in Jammu and Kashmir also, there is a tie between Jammu and Srinagar. Centre has chosen just 100 cities in the first phase, rest of the cities can be taken up by the respective state governments for development. This is for their own benefit, he added.Follow and connect with us on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin"
<https://realty.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/industry/naik-recommends-both-meerut-rae-bareli-for-smart-cities-list/50051002>