Smart Cities Mission

What is the Smart Cities Mission?

Smart Cities Mission is a Centrally Sponsored Scheme of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, launched by the Prime Minister on 25 June 2015 alongside AMRUT and PMAY-Urban. It funded 100 selected cities to build core infrastructure, apply technology to city services, and demonstrate replicable models of urban development.

Smart Cities Mission is unusual among central schemes because cities, not individuals, were the beneficiaries. Selection happened through a competition called the Smart City Challenge, in which states first nominated cities and the shortlisted cities then submitted Smart City Proposals that were scored against each other.

Key objectives

• Provide core infrastructure, assured water and electricity supply, sanitation and solid waste management, efficient public transport, affordable housing, IT connectivity, e-governance, safety and health.
• Apply "smart solutions" so that infrastructure and services use data and technology rather than concrete alone.
• Create replicable models that other cities can copy, so the Mission acts as a lighthouse rather than covering every town.

Main features

• 100 cities selected through the Smart City Challenge, in rounds from January 2016 to June 2018.
• Rs 48,000 crore central outlay for the 100 cities, roughly Rs 500 crore per city over five years, released at about Rs 100 crore a year and matched equally by the state and the urban local body.
• Special Purpose Vehicles in every city, with 50:50 equity held by the state government and the urban local body, headed by a full-time CEO.
• Two strategic components in every Smart City Proposal: Area-Based Development and Pan-City Solutions.
• Mission period extended to 31 March 2025 to complete the balance projects.

What does Area-Based Development mean under the Smart Cities Mission?

Smart Cities Mission required each city to pick a compact area and transform it completely, using one of three models:

• Retrofitting: upgrading an existing built-up area of more than 500 acres with better infrastructure while keeping its current structures.
• Redevelopment; replacing the existing built-up environment in an area of more than 50 acres with a new layout and higher density.
• Greenfield development: planning a previously vacant area of more than 250 acres with affordable housing for the poor built in.

The second component, Pan-City Solutions, applies technology across the whole municipal area, for example, intelligent transport systems, smart water metering, or a city-wide surveillance and traffic management network.

Who is eligible for the Smart Cities Mission?

Cities could be selected if:

• The state government nominated them in the first stage of the Smart City Challenge, based on state-level scoring covering existing service levels, institutional capacity, past reform performance and financial health.
• The city submitted a Smart City Proposal with a defined area-based development plan, a pan-city solution, a financing plan and evidence of citizen consultation.
• The city committed to forming an SPV and to raising the matching share from the state, the ULB, convergence with other schemes, municipal bonds, loans and public-private partnership.

Who cannot apply:

• Individual citizens are not eligible for any grant, subsidy or house under the Smart Cities Mission. There is no citizen application form for money and anybody asking for a fee to "register you for the smart city scheme" is running a fraud.
• Cities outside the final list of 100 are not eligible for Mission funds, although many state governments ran parallel state smart city programmes.
• New city applications are no longer accepted because the Smart City Challenge closed in June 2018 and the Mission itself ended on 31 March 2025.

What documents are involved in the Smart Cities Mission?

How to apply for Smart Cities Mission opportunities

Individuals cannot apply for a benefit, but there are three real routes for citizens, graduates and businesses to engage with the Mission's institutions.

1. Open the official Mission portal at smartcities.gov.in and identify the Smart City SPV for your city from the city dashboard.
2. To apply as an intern, register on the TULIP portal, the Urban Learning Internship Program of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs and AICTE, with your degree or provisional certificate, and apply to internships posted by smart cities and urban local bodies.
3. To bid as a contractor or technology vendor, register on your state eProcurement portal, then track tenders published by the city SPV and submit your bid with firm registration, GST and past-performance documents.
4. To participate as a resident, attend the area sabha or ward committee meetings of your city and use the MyGov consultations that cities run for Smart City projects.
5. To use the services, download your city's citizen app linked from the Smart City SPV site. Most cities route grievance, parking, transport and waste-collection complaints through the ICCC.

How much did the Smart Cities Mission spend and deliver?

According to the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, the Government of India had released Rs 46,585 crore, about 97 per cent of the Rs 48,000 crore allocation: to the 100 cities by the close of the Mission period.

• 8,063 projects were taken up in the 100 cities.
• 7,504 projects worth about Rs 1,50,306 crore were complete as of March 2025, with 559 projects worth about Rs 14,239 crore still ongoing.
• 100 Integrated Command and Control Centres are operational, one in every selected city.
• 18 of the 100 cities had finished all their projects by March 2025, including Agra, Varanasi, Madurai, Coimbatore, Udaipur, Pune, Surat and Vadodara.
• By August 2025, the government reported that about 95 per cent of the sanctioned projects had been completed.

What happened when the Smart Cities Mission ended?

Smart Cities Mission concluded on 31 March 2025. The assets it created, ICCCs, smart roads, solar rooftops, sewerage networks, e-buses, smart classrooms and public bicycle systems; were handed to the urban local body or continue under the city SPV. Recurring costs of operating these assets, particularly the ICCCs and surveillance networks, now sit on municipal budgets, which is the main sustainability question raised in independent reviews of the Mission.

Common criticisms and things to check locally

• Uneven completion. Only 18 cities finished everything by March 2025; the rest closed with ongoing works transferred to the ULB.
• Area-Based Development covered a small footprint of each city, so benefits were geographically concentrated.
• Operating expenditure for ICCCs and smart infrastructure was not funded by the Mission beyond the project period.
• SPV accountability sits outside the elected municipal council, which several city governments have flagged.

If you want to know what was actually built in your city, the city SPV publishes a project-wise list and status; the Mission portal also hosts city dashboards.

Help and contacts

• Smart Cities Mission Division, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Nirman Bhawan, Maulana Azad Road, New Delhi 110011 to Director (Smart Cities), 011-23062194
• Mission portal: smartcities.gov.in
• TULIP internships: the Urban Learning Internship Program portal
• Your city Smart City SPV, for project, tender and grievance queries

Note on sources. The Smart Cities Mission portal was not reachable from this network at the time of checking, so the figures above were verified against Press Information Bureau releases of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, including the "10 Years of Smart Cities Mission" note and the Mission extension release.

How to check your application status

There is no individual "Smart Cities Mission application" to track, since the Mission funded cities, not people. What you can actually track depends on which of the three engagement routes you used.

If you applied for a TULIP internship:

1. Log in to the TULIP portal with the same credentials used at registration.
2. Open your "My Applications" or dashboard section, which shows each internship you applied to and its current stage: applied, shortlisted, selected or closed.
3. Shortlisting and selection decisions are made by the individual smart city or urban local body that posted the internship, not by a central office, so status can take weeks to update after a posting closes.
4. If the dashboard shows no movement for a long period, write to the specific ULB or SPV that posted the internship rather than the central Mission office, since they control the shortlisting.

If you bid on a Smart City SPV tender:

1. Track the tender number on the state eProcurement portal where you submitted the bid; technical and financial bid evaluation results are published there stage by stage.
2. The city SPV also typically publishes a work-order or letter-of-award list on its own website once a tender is finalised.
3. For queries on a specific bid, contact the SPV's tender or procurement cell directly using the contact details printed in the tender document, since the central Mission office does not process individual bids.

If you want to know the status of your city's Smart City projects:

1. Visit smartcities.gov.in and open your city's dashboard, which lists sanctioned projects and their completion status as last reported to the Ministry.
2. For more current or granular information, check your city SPV's own website, since SPVs update their project lists more often than the national dashboard.
3. For a grievance about a specific piece of infrastructure, such as a malfunctioning smart pole or a stalled sewerage line, use the city's citizen app or the Integrated Command and Control Centre's public grievance number, since these are handled locally.

Common reasons for rejection

Because the Mission itself is closed to new city entrants, "rejection" here means an individual's TULIP internship application or a firm's tender bid being turned down, not a Smart City Proposal being rejected.

TULIP internship applications are commonly turned down because:

• The academic programme or year of study does not match what the posting asked for. Each internship specifies eligible degrees, streams and sometimes a minimum semester or year; applying outside that window gets filtered out before a human reviews it. Check the eligibility line in the posting itself, not just the internship title, before applying.
• The internship was already filled or closed by the time the application was reviewed, since postings often draw far more applicants than the number of seats. Re-check open postings regularly rather than assuming an old application is still live.
• Supporting documents were incomplete or illegible, such as a blurred degree certificate or a mismatched name across the certificate and the application form. Re-upload clear copies and make sure the name matches your identity document exactly.
• The profile did not match the specific project's skill requirement, for instance a civil engineering posting receiving an application from a commerce graduate. Apply to postings that genuinely match your academic background and stated skills rather than mass-applying to every open listing.

Tender bids from contractors and vendors are commonly rejected because:

• The bidder lacked the mandatory registration or eligibility criteria stated in the tender, such as a minimum turnover, a specific class of contractor registration, or prior experience of a similar-sized project. Read the eligibility section of the tender document before preparing a bid, since these thresholds are fixed by the SPV and not negotiable after submission.
• The bid was submitted after the deadline on the eProcurement portal, which has no manual override, since eProcurement systems close automatically at the stated time. Submit well before the deadline to allow for portal load or upload delays.
• Firm registration, GST or past-performance documents did not match the bidder's name or were expired, which fails the technical evaluation stage before the financial bid is even opened. Keep registration and GST documents current and use the exact registered firm name throughout the bid.
• The financial bid was found unrealistically low or high compared to the estimated cost, which SPVs can query or reject under standard public procurement rules. Price bids against the actual cost of materials and labour rather than to win at any cost, since an unsupported low bid invites rejection at the scrutiny stage.

If a bid or internship application is rejected without a clear reason, the SPV or ULB that posted it is the right authority to ask, since central Mission offices do not adjudicate individual tenders or internships.