SRINAGAR: Jammu and Kashmir has completed 281 of its 288 Smart Cities Mission projects, a completion rate of about 97.6 per cent, government data show, placing the Union Territory marginally above the national average as the mission moves into an operations and maintenance phase.
The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs’ data tabled in Parliament records that central assistance of Rs 941 crore was claimed for Jammu and Kashmir under the Smart Cities Mission, of which Rs 885 crore has been utilised. Jammu accounted for 127 projects costing Rs 2,969 crore — 125 of them complete — while Srinagar had 161 projects costing Rs 3,634 crore with 156 complete. Only seven projects, costing Rs 140 crore, remain ongoing across the two cities.
Nationally, the mission has taken up 8,064 projects with a total cost of Rs 1,64,811 crore; 7,767 projects worth Rs 1,55,859 crore have been completed and 297 projects costing Rs 8,952 crore are ongoing. The annexure also notes that Integrated Command and Control Centres have been set up across the 100 smart cities and that digital systems — including SCADA monitoring for water networks and CCTV deployments for public safety — form part of the mission’s legacy.
The relatively small ongoing cost (Rs 140 crore) indicates that outstanding works are limited in scale and should be closable within short timelines, provided administrative bottlenecks and seasonal construction constraints are managed.
Smart Cities projects commonly target water supply, urban mobility, waste management, public spaces and heritage conservation; the national summary highlights outcomes such as 17,000 km of water networks under SCADA, more than 83,000 CCTV cameras and 1,300 public-space projects. If fully operational in Jammu and Srinagar, these interventions can reduce non-revenue water, improve traffic management, modernise waste collection and upgrade civic amenities — all of which would strengthen urban resilience, public safety and the tourism proposition in the two cities.
