हम 100 नए शहर बनाने की शुरुआत करेंगे; नवीनतम तकनीक और अवसंरचना से युक्त — स्थिरता, ‘वॉक टु वर्क’ जैसी अवधारणाओं का पालन करते हुए और विशिष्ट क्षेत्रों पर केंद्रित।

Read the 2014 promise carefully, because the difference between what it says and what was done is the whole story. Under "Urban Areas - High Growth Centres" the manifesto commits: "We will initiate building 100 new cities; enabled with the latest in technology and infrastructure - adhering to concepts like sustainability, walk to work etc, and focused on specialized domains." The next line adds "concepts like Twin cities and Satellite towns". That is a promise about greenfield urbanisation — new places, on new land.

The Smart Cities Mission, launched in June 2015, did not do that. As the CAG describes it, the mission "aimed to develop 100 smart cities across India through core infrastructure improvement, sustainable and inclusive development and the application of smart solutions." A hundred existing cities were selected through a competition, each forming a special purpose vehicle to run an area-based development project in one part of the city plus a "Pan City" technology component. No new city was founded under the mission. The two programmes share a number and nothing else, and the substitution has never been acknowledged as one.

That leaves the fair second question: how did the mission that was actually run perform? Two CAG performance audits in our corpus test it.

In Karnataka, where Bengaluru, Belagavi, Davanagere, Mangaluru and Shivamogga were selected, the headline finding is that money moved out of the component meant to benefit the whole city. "As against ₹817.42 crore allocation under Pan City, projects were taken up to the tune of ₹1,462.67 crore indicating diversion of funds." The Pan City component was the mission's answer to the obvious objection that area-based development helps a few square kilometres; spending 79 per cent above its allocation sounds generous until you note the money came from elsewhere in the same envelope.

The corporate vehicles built to run all this were thinly capitalised. Each smart city company was to have ₹200 crore of paid-up capital from the Centre, state and urban local body together; the audit found actual paid-up capital of "₹19.08 crore only against ₹60.22 crore" due at that stage. Plans changed heavily too: 30 per cent of the projects originally proposed were later cancelled or substantially altered, which the audit notes was against the ministry's framework. Smaller findings fill in the picture — ₹2.69 crore of interest earned on central grant money never remitted to the Consolidated Funds, ₹2.56 crore of excess payment in test-checked contracts.

Dehradun gives the ground-level version. The audit's summary is that "Numerous 'Smart Solutions' as outlined in the Detailed Project Report were dropped during execution or remained non-functional due to inadequate planning and implementation", and it concludes that "the intended objectives of SCM - to provide core infrastructure, give a decent quality of life to its citizens and application of 'Smart' Solutions have been partially achieved." The specifics are the kind that recur across this mission: a biometric and sensor-based solid waste module built for ₹4.55 crore in March 2022 and left unused; e-rickshaws bought for ₹0.90 crore not operating; ₹5.91 crore of interactive boards, computer labs, projectors, CCTVs and biometric attendance in three government schools lying idle; ₹2.62 crore of environmental sensors and ₹3.24 crore of multi-utility duct written off as wasteful; eight projects delayed 19 to 38 months with ₹1.41 crore of penalties not effectively imposed.

The mission closed on 31 March 2025, and the ministry gave Parliament its final account on 6 August 2026: "Under SCM, 8,064 projects worth ₹1,64,811 Cr were taken up since inception of the Mission. As reported by States/UTs as on 31.03.2026, 7,790 projects (97%) worth ₹1,56,257 Cr have been completed. ICCCs have been established in all 100 Smart Cities." A NITI Aayog evaluation published in September 2025, the answer says, found "strong alignment with national urban priorities" and a 93 per cent completion rate. Those numbers count projects, not outcomes — the Dehradun audit's unused waste module and idle school equipment would appear in them as completed — but they are the government's own record and they are substantial.

Two states are not a national verdict on the mission, and this fact-check does not offer one. On the manifesto promise it does not need to. A hundred new cities were promised and none were built; a different programme of the same number was substituted, and where we have audited evidence of that programme it shows diverted funds, undercapitalised vehicles, a third of the plan dropped and equipment bought but not used. Our verdict on the claim as made is not supported.