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The Union Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry has extended the timeline for the implementation of Smart Cities Mission to June 2023 due to the Covid pandemic and other reasons. According to an earlier deadline, the cities were expected to complete their projects within five years of being selected under the Smart Cities Mission. All the 100 smart cities selected under the mission will now have to complete their projects by June 2023.

100 smart cities had been selected through four rounds of competition from January 2016 to June 2018. The ministry had launched the Smart Cities Mission on June 25, 2015. In the past, the government has come under criticism from the opposition over the implementation of the smart cities mission, one of the flagship programmes of the BJP government. According to the ministry, the objective of the Smart Cities Mission is to promote cities that provide core infrastructure and give a decent quality of life to their citizens and a clean and sustainable environment through the application of smart solutions.

Recently, the Ministry had said that as of November 12, 2021, these Smart Cities have tendered out 6,452 projects worth Rs 1,84,998 crore. Out of these, work orders have been issued in 5,809 projects worth Rs 1,56,571 crore and 3,131 of those projects worth Rs 53,175 crore have been completed. Till the same period, the Central government has released Rs 27,235 crore to states and Union territories for their smart cities.