In a meeting held on Friday 23 June 2017, Dehradun is finalized as the 16th city for the smart city project. A total of 30 cities have been selected for the smart city project. Uttarakhand capital Dehradun is one amongst them.
In the previous three lists, Dehradun could not manage to get selected for the smart city project. Previous government under Harish Rawat tried a lot to get the name of Dehradun in the list of smart cities. This year finally Dehradun has got selected for this venture.
In the previous proposals, the option given was for Tea cultivation land. In the second fast-track procedure, top 23 cities were selected but Dehradun was not selected. After that in the third proposal the clock tower Dehradun was sent as a fresh proposal. Still, it could not come in the list of smart cities.
Finally, after an endless reshuffling of the proposal, the city has come in the list of smart cities. Dehradun is advanced in terms of development and education. The best institutions of India exist in Dehradun. Strangely till date, it was not considered for the smart city project.
The new government tried a different strategy for the proposal and it worked. It is a great day for Uttarakhand government. The development will start soon to make Dehradun have all parameters of being a smart city of India.