Tamil Nadu Government has submitted 12 Smart City Plans to the Ministry of Urban Development. State Government could not submit the same by the stipulated deadline of December 15,2015 on account of being pre-occupied with management of floods in Chennai and other parts of the State. The State Government has accordingly sought time and submitted Smart City Plans for all 12 cities and towns in the State included in the Smart City Mission to the Ministry .
The 12 cities and towns included in the Smart City Mission are : Tiruchirapalli, Tirunelveli, Dindigul, Thanjavur, Tiruppur, Salem, Vellore, Coimbattore, Madurai, Erode, Thoothukudi and Chennai.
With this, 97 cities out of the 98 included in the Smart City Mission have submitted Smart City Plans to the Ministry of Urban Development. 85 cities have done so by the stipulated deadline of December 15,2015. Telananga Government wanted to replace Hyderabad by another city. Uttar Pradesh and Jammu & Kashmir are still to nominate one city each for inclusion in the Smart City Mission.
Ministry of Urban Development has already set in motion the process of evaluation of city level Smart City Plans by setting of three teams of two experts each and the Plans received have been referred to them for evaluation in the second stage of City Challenge competition.
At the end of the evaluation, the first batch of Smart Cities to be financed during this financial year would be announced. The Ministry has set a cap of 20 such cities to be financed during this financial year and 40 each during the next two years.