New Delhi: Congress president Sonia Gandhi’s home turf Rae Bareli, newly-formed Telangana’s state capital Hyderabad and Srinagar are out of the smart city race, which envisages developing 100 Indian cities into smart cities over the next five years.

While Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao decided against rooting for Hyderabad in the first phase of the project, Gandhi’s Rae Bareli and Srinagar got stuck in the Centre-state tussle.

Initially, Telangana had decided to develop Hyderabad into a smart city. However, in December Rao withdrew the capital city and decided to send an alternate plan in the second round.

However, for Rae Bareli, Uttar Pradesh has to develop 13 smart cities. While it could choose 12 cities in the intra-state competition, Gandhi’s Rae Bareli and Meerut, a BJP constituency, were tied for the 13th spot. Even as the state put the ball into centre’s court and asked the centre to make the choice, the centre lobbed the ball back to the state and said make one choice and explain why the choice was made.
For the time being the matter seems to be stuck.

Jammu and Kashmir government is facing a similar problem. The state has been allotted a quota of one. The state has refused to make the choice between Jammu and Srinagar and has asked the urban development ministry to increase its share to two. With the ministry not entertaining any increase in quota, the matter is back to the state government.

The first round now has 97 instead of 100 smart cities in round 1.