Parliamentary panel recommends high-level committee to assess India’s urban infra needs

Citing the lack of an integrated semipermanent municipality concern and strategy framework, a Parliamentary Standing Committee has recommended that the authorities represent a High-Level Expert Committee to comprehensively measure India’s municipality infrastructure requirements, financing needs, governance reforms, and capacity-building imperatives up to 2047.

In its study submitted successful some Houses of Parliament connected Thursday (March 12, 2026), the Standing Committee connected Housing and Urban Affairs has argued that the lack of specified a model whitethorn pb to fragmented planning, mediocre assets allocation, and financing accent successful the future.

Sector-specific programmes

The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs said successful its submissions earlier the committee that assorted ongoing missions — specified arsenic AMRUT 2.0 (tap h2o proviso and sewerage), SBM-U 2.0 (toilets and coagulated waste), PMAY-U 2.0 (housing), Metro Rail projects, and PM e-Bus Seva — are improving the prime of beingness successful Indian cities, and supporting the imaginativeness of Viksit Bharat 2047.

The committee, however, noted that these flagship programmes stay mostly scheme-driven and sector-specific.

The Ministry besides referred to the 2022 report, “Cities arsenic Engines of Growth”, by NITI Aayog and Asian Development Bank (ADB), which highlights the beardown correlation betwixt urbanisation and GDP growth.

No valuation beyond 2030

The astir caller broad municipality infrastructure appraisal was conducted by a High Powered Expert Committee (HPEC) committee successful 2011, covering projections lone up to 2031, and predicting that 75% of Indians volition unrecorded successful cities by 2030. No updated national-level valuation exists for demands beyond 2030, the sheet noted.

In this situation, the parliamentary sheet recommended that the Ministry represent a caller High-Level Expert Committee to comprehensively measure municipality needs up to 2047. A forward-looking and evidence-based roadmap volition alteration coordinated planning, amended fiscal preparedness, and balanced municipality improvement crossed metropolitan, Tier-II, and Tier-III cities, it added.