Case 25 · Public money

100 smart cities. One finished on time

Launched 25 Jun 2015

Deadline moved five times

4,069 days since Recorded outcome: Deadline moved five times.

Human cost

100 cities enrolled. A parliamentary panel found Madurai alone had completed all its projects by December 2023, while 14 cities stood at or below half — Gangtok at 16%, Shillong 24%, Itanagar 31%

Financial cost

₹48,000 cr of central outlay against ₹1.64 lakh cr of projects taken up. ₹11,775 cr went on command and control centres, the one item all 100 cities managed to finish

What happened

Launched on 25 June 2015 for 100 cities, each given five years from the date of its selection. The mission took up 8,064 projects worth ₹1.64 lakh crore against a central outlay of ₹48,000 crore.

Claim against record

What the government said

The ministry's position is that the mission was never meant to transform whole cities: it was deliberately an area-based development model of retrofitting, redevelopment and greenfield work inside a defined area, plus one pan-city digital initiative, intended to create a replicable template. On that yardstick it reports 97% project completion, 99% of the central share claimed and 98% of released funds used as of March 2026, and cites a NITI Aayog evaluation of September 2025 finding the mission demonstrated strong relevance to India's urban needs.

What the record shows

Deadline moved five times

The deadline moved from 2019-20 to June 2023, then June 2024, then March 2025, then June 2025, then December 2025. The Parliamentary Standing Committee on Housing and Urban Affairs found in February 2024 that 400 projects worth ₹22,814 crore would miss even that, and that the ministry's answer was that states would have to finish them at their own cost — prompting the committee to observe that the ministry's role 'should not be confined to transfer of their share'. Only 6% of projects were financed through public-private partnership against a targeted 21%, which is the mission's financing model failing rather than lagging. Nearly a year after official closure, 280 projects worth ₹8,652 crore were still under implementation, and the unfinished work is the expensive work: ₹29 crore average for what is still running against ₹20.1 crore for what is done.

Contested / alleged

The ₹48,000 cr is the Union allocation alone; the ₹1.64 lakh cr is total project value including state, convergence and private funding. The widely repeated claim that only 18 of 100 cities declared full completion is unverified and is not relied on here.

What accountability should have looked like

Deadlines that are met or explained, a published city-by-city completion table, and a financing model tested somewhere before 100 cities are enrolled in it.

Ministers and office-holders responsible

Owns the mission; five deadline extensions, unfinished projects passed to statesMinistry of Housing and Urban Affairs

Naming who held the portfolio is a matter of public record. It is not by itself a finding of personal responsibility for any death or any rupee.

Sources

T1 primary record · T2 reporting · T3 partisan

Ask them officially. File an RTI Know a better source? Add one

Cite or export this case

Citizens' Accountability Ledger, "100 smart cities. One finished on time" (Launched 25 Jun 2015), case-62. https://whoisresponsible.xyz/case/case-62/

JSON for this case The whole ledger as CSV

Quote the case id rather than the number on the card. The id never changes; the number shifts whenever an older case is added ahead of this one.