City Beat: Centre Releases Rs 200 Cr For Chennai & Coimbatore Smart City Projects [Video]

Gearing up for the Smart Cities Mission, the Centre has set up a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) and released Rs 200 crore of funds each for Chennai and Coimbatore. These funds are a part of the Central government grant under which each city will get Rs 500 crore. Tamil Nadu, with 12 cities, has the highest number of smart cities approved so far. Moreover, for further developments, the Centre has also approved funds for Tamil Nadu which include Rs 2,936 crore for the Smart City Mission, Rs 7,082 crore for the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation, Rs 340 crore for the Swachh Bharat Mission, Rs 45 crore for the Hriday scheme and Rs 1,796 crore for the Housing Mission.

A good news for those planning to construct outside the Chennai Metropolitan Area. The Directorate of Town and Country Planning (DTCP) has gone online with the approval process. The DTCP planned this move after the Greater Chennai Corporation came up with a similar process for buildings being constructed within the city. The online module, created by a private company, will allow architects and licenced developers to submit drawings for permissions and later check the status of the same using a reference code generated at the time of submission. The results, according to DTCP, will be sent via mailbox to the applicants.

Now some commercial news. According to media reports, software services major Tata Consultancy Services is in the final stages of leasing nearly eight lakh sq ft of office space in Chennai's One IT SEZ. The space will be leased for 10 years, for which TCS will pay a rent of Rs 50 per sq ft per month, taking the total annual rent to Rs 47 crore.