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Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs Tokhan Sahu chaired reviews at Sankalp Bhawan, New Delhi on 25 August 2026 covering the Gurugram metro connectivity project, AMRUT 2.0 and CITIIS 2.0.
Responding to the 10th Report of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Housing and Urban Affairs, the Ministry said sewerage and septage projects account for about Rs 71,133 crore of the Rs 1,97,191 crore approved project cost under AMRUT 2.0 - nearly 36% of investment, though only about 6.8% of the number of projects.
394 sewerage projects worth about Rs 47,230 crore are under implementation; on completion they are expected to give new sewer connections to about 48.76 lakh households and benefit about 60.59 lakh households through system upgrades and servicing.
The Ministry contested the Committee's coverage assessment, noting that AMRUT covers 500 cities with about 7.41 crore urban households as per 2025 data, while the Committee drew on about 4,900 urban cities and 11.32 crore households; on AMRUT-city data, coverage is about 55%.
The CITIIS 2.0 review covered city-wise progress, State Climate Cells and proposed solid waste management interventions for Bilaspur.
Launched on 1 October 2021 for FY 2021-22 to FY 2025-26 with the twin goals of making cities 'water secure' and 'self-reliant' - universal water supply coverage extended to about 4,800 statutory towns, and universal sewerage and septage management in the 500 AMRUT cities.
Key: Total indicative outlay of Rs 2,77,000 crore including a central share of Rs 76,760 crore; targets of 2.68 crore tap connections and 2.64 crore sewer connections; projects geo-tagged and monitored on a technology platform.
Launched on 25 June 2015 in 500 cities as India's first mission-mode urban programme for water supply, sewerage and septage, storm-water drainage, non-motorised transport and green spaces.
Key: It established the 500-city universe that AMRUT 2.0 inherited for its sewerage and septage target - the reason the Ministry insists the Standing Committee's 4,900-city denominator is not the Mission's own.
Approved by the Union Cabinet in 2023 for the period 2023 to 2027, to support competitively selected projects promoting the circular economy with a focus on integrated waste management at city level, climate-oriented reform at State level and institutional strengthening at national level.
Key: Conceived by MoHUA in partnership with the French Development Agency (AFD), KfW, the European Union and the National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA). Funding is about Rs 1,760 crore (EUR 200 million) in loans from AFD and KfW plus a technical assistance grant of about Rs 106 crore (EUR 12 million) from the EU, supporting up to 18 cities including Bilaspur, Agartala, Agra, Guwahati, Jaipur, Madurai, Panaji, Rajkot and Srinagar.
Launched on 25 June 2015 to provide core infrastructure, a clean and sustainable environment and a decent quality of life in 100 selected cities through 'smart solutions'.
Key: Central assistance of Rs 48,000 crore over five years, disbursed at about Rs 100 crore per city per year, with implementation through city-level Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs). CITIIS operates on top of this mission's city network.
Launched on 1 October 2021 - the same day as AMRUT 2.0 - with the vision of Garbage Free cities through 100% source segregation, door-to-door collection, scientific management of all waste fractions and remediation of legacy dumpsites.
Key: SBM-U 2.0 and AMRUT 2.0 are a deliberate pair: 'Garbage Free' and 'Water Secure' are the two halves of the same urban sanitation goal, which is why solid waste interventions surface inside a CITIIS review.
Launched on 9 September 2022 under AMRUT 2.0 to assess service-level compliance in the AMRUT cities on water supply, sewerage and septage management.
Key: Uses three streams - self-assessment by urban local bodies on an online portal, direct observation by assessors at treatment plants and water bodies, and citizen feedback - making it the water-sector counterpart of Swachh Survekshan.
Gave constitutional status to urban local bodies by inserting Part IX-A ('The Municipalities', Articles 243-P to 243-ZG) and the Twelfth Schedule with 18 functional items, including water supply, public health, sanitation and solid waste management. It came into force on 1 June 1993. This is why the Ministry's answer on delays points to State governments and ULBs: the functions AMRUT 2.0 finances are constitutionally theirs to execute.
Approved by the Union Cabinet on 16 August 2017. It makes a private participation (PPP) component mandatory for a new metro project to receive central assistance, and requires the State to prepare a Comprehensive Mobility Plan through a Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority and to evaluate alternatives such as BRTS and light rail before a metro is chosen. Any new corridor, Gurugram's included, is appraised against this policy.
Its reports are recommendatory rather than binding, but the ministry concerned must place an Action Taken Report before the House - which is the exercise this review meeting was preparing. The 10th Report's assessment of AMRUT 2.0's sewerage coverage is what the Ministry was answering.
Nodal ministry for AMRUT 2.0, CITIIS 2.0, the Smart Cities Mission, SBM-Urban and metro rail policy. It funds and monitors; States and urban local bodies execute.
Autonomous urban research and capacity-building institute that serves as the national programme management unit for CITIIS and CITIIS 2.0.
The company implementing metro connectivity from Millennium City Centre to Cyber City in Gurugram, Haryana. The Union Cabinet approved the corridor on 7 June 2023; it spans about 28.5 km with 27 stations at an estimated cost of about Rs 5,452 crore, and is a 50:50 joint venture between the Government of India and the Government of Haryana.
The French and German public development banks that provide the loan financing for CITIIS 2.0, alongside a European Union technical assistance grant.
The Gurugram metro review was timed ahead of a PRAGATI meeting. PRAGATI (Pro-Active Governance and Timely Implementation) was launched on 25 March 2015 as a multi-purpose, multi-modal platform combining digital data management, video conferencing and geospatial technology, chaired by the Prime Minister with Union Secretaries and State Chief Secretaries on the same screen - the standard escalation route for stalled infrastructure projects.
AMRUT 2.0 is the urban counterpart of the rural Jal Jeevan Mission's functional household tap connection target. Questions often pair them to test which mission covers which settlement type and which ministry runs each - AMRUT under MoHUA, JJM under the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation in the Ministry of Jal Shakti.
Universal water and sanitation coverage is SDG 6; sustainable cities and communities is SDG 11. AMRUT 2.0, SBM-U 2.0 and CITIIS 2.0 are India's principal urban delivery instruments reported against both.
CITIIS 2.0's stated design principle is the circular economy applied to municipal waste - keeping material in use rather than sending it to landfill. That is the bridge between an urban mission and the environment syllabus, and it explains why a Bilaspur solid waste discussion belongs in an infrastructure review.
GS Paper 2 > Governance > Government Policies and Interventions; Local Self-Government
General Awareness > Government Schemes and Static Polity
General Awareness > Government Schemes, Outlays and Multilateral Lenders
General Awareness > Urban Infrastructure Schemes
With reference to 'National Investment and Infrastructure Fund', which of the following statements is/are correct? 1. It is an organ of NITI Aayog. 2. It has a corpus of ₹4,00,000 crore at present. Select the correct answer using the code given below:
Answer: Neither 1 nor 2
Urban missions are asked almost every year in SSC and appear regularly in UPSC Prelims through the schemes-and-schedules route.
Scientific collection, transport, treatment and disposal of faecal sludge from septic tanks - the on-site alternative to a piped sewerage network.
Municipal corporation, municipal council or nagar panchayat constituted under Part IX-A of the Constitution; the executing agency for most AMRUT works.
A separate company created to implement a mission's projects in a city, used in the Smart Cities Mission and in metro projects such as GMRL.
An economic model that keeps materials in use through reuse, recycling and recovery instead of a linear extract-use-discard flow; the organising idea of CITIIS 2.0.
The reply a ministry must place before Parliament setting out what it has done about a Standing Committee's recommendations.