Smart cities' command rooms face uncertainty

THE ANNUAL OPERATING COST OF THESE CENTRES RANGES FROM ₹2-3 CRORE PER CITY

- Soumya Chatterjee

NEW DELHI: With the Smart Cities Mission — a flagship initiative launched by the Narendra Modi government in 2015—coming to a close on March 31, the future of one of its most prominent features, the Integrated Command and Control Centres (ICCCs), hangs in the balance.

The success of the mission, spread across 100 cities, has been mixed. But ICCCs—high-tech control rooms equipped with a network of cameras, sensors, and IoT devices—have emerged as a common and visible infrastructure backbone over the past five years. These nerve centres have played a key role in urban governance, enabling traffic monitoring, crime tracking, flood and disaster management, and public health response during the pandemic.

But now, with 7,545 projects completed at a cost of ₹1.51 lakh crore, a key challenge lies ahead: how will these control rooms continue to operate once central and state funding dries up—especially given the financial fragility of most municipal bodies?