Mangaluru: In the third list of 27 cities which were chosen for smart city project announced by the Central government, Mangaluru has succeeded to secure a place. It was very good news for Karnataka as four of its cities have been chosen for the smart city mission, on Tuesday.

Other Karnataka bound cities which are chosen for smart city mission are Shivamogga, Huballi-Dharwad and Tumakur.

The 27 cities include five from Maharashtra, four from Tamil Nadu, three from Uttar Pradesh, two each from Punjab, Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh and one each from Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Gujarat, Nagaland and Sikkim.

The other cities selected include Aurangabad, Gwalior, Hubli-Dharwad, Jalandhar and Kohima.

One city each from Nagaland and Sikkim along with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s constituency, Varanasi, have been selected in this round of the competition.

These cities have been selected from 63 cities who participated in the third round of the competition.

“This willingness and enthusiasm among the cities to participate in more than one round of competition is a clear evidence of the ‘urban renaissance’ set in motion under the new urban sector initiatives of the government,” minister for urban development, M. Venkaiah Naidu, said while announcing the names of the 27 new cities.

The cities selected on Tuesday have proposed a total investment of Rs66,883 crore under their respective plans.

“A total investment of Rs144,742 crore has been proposed by the 60 cities under their smart city plans,” Naidu said.

The process for selection of the remaining 40 cities will begin from January.

The government has already announced the names of 33 cities which were selected in the first phase of the programme.

According to the guidelines of the mission, the government was to select 20 cities in the first phase and 40 in the next two years. However, in May this year, 13 more cities were included in the first phase to expand the representation of states in the mission. The names of the first 20 cities, including Jabalpur, Vishakapatnam and Guwahati, were announced in January.

The mission, which is one of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet projects, was launched with the aim of developing 100 smart cities. While 98 cities were shortlisted at the time of initial submissions in December, the government included Meerut and Rai Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh and Jammu and Srinagar in Jammu and Kashmir in the competition. Seven capital cities—Patna, Shimla, Naya Raipur, Itanagar, Amaravati, Bengaluru and Thiruvananthapuram—have also been allowed to participate.

The Smart Cities Mission was launched in June 2015 with the government releasing the guidelines and mission statement for the 100 Smart Cities project. The mission has been allotted a budget of Rs.48,000 crore for five years. In June this year, Modi launched projects in 20 cities selected under the mission, officially kick-starting the project.