CII inked MoUs with technology firms Siemens and Hitachi on 17 March 2015, for the government’s Smart Cities’ initiative.

Under the agreement, the industry-led consortia will undertake the conceptualisation and implementation of pilot projects in smart cities.

CII has set up the 'National Mission on Smart Cities', a consortium comprising industry leaders and experts to provide policy advocacy and thought leadership to government and other stakeholders. The MoUs signed are part of the implementation strategy to take forward the initiative on smart cities.

The National Mission will begin by working on three pilot projects, which can be internalised and used as a common template for scalability.

A smart city development involves components such as transportation, infrastructure for employment, responsive public services, information and communications technology etc.

The government envisages developing 100 smart cities by 2022. However, in the Union Budget for 2015-16, it has allocated just Rs 143.05 crore for the project, down from Rs 7,016 crore in 2014-15.