Bengal theme cities: bidding in October

Tendering for the first ´smart, theme city´ project of the West Bengal government is expected to begin next month. Of the six proposed cities, bidding process will begin with the one at Baruipur (some 30 km west of Kolkata). Baruipur is being themed as a senior citizen´s city. The five other smart theme cities include a sports city at Howrah (Kolkata´s twin city across the river Hooghly); a health and education city at Siliguri (in North Bengal); an industrial city in Asansol (206 km); the arts and culture one at Bolpur (155 km); and an analytics city at Kalyani (51 km).The Baruipur theme city project which will go for bidding next month, will come up on around 84 acre and will have a 99 acre lease. The new joint model of development of townships (with private developers) comes in place of the previous PPP model where the State government would offer the land as equity.