Yogi to develop Lucknow as magnet city

Lucknow: The Uttar Pradesh government has embarked on an ambitious plan to develop Lucknow as the country’s eighth ‘Magnet City’ under its larger plan to develop the state capital as the country’s first AI city, a government spokesman said.

A Magnet City is one that attracts people and investments.

The aim is to develop Lucknow as India’s eighth ‘Magnet City’ in the next five years, with the period divided into 20 quarters.

On behalf of Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, the officials concerned had been told to engage in mission mode to achieve this goal, said the spokesman.

Presently, seven cities of the country are known as Magnet Cities, including Delhi-NCR, Kolkata, Chennai, Mumbai, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad and Bengaluru.

To make the state a one trillion-dollar economy in the next five years, the Yogi government plans to rejuvenate five cities of Uttar Pradesh.

The government has a complete strategy ready to develop Lucknow, Kanpur, Gautam Buddha Nagar, Varanasi and Prayagraj as IT hubs and ITES sector.

The government believes that these five districts of Uttar Pradesh would open doors for the development of the state in the IT and ITES sectors, preventing migration of excellent talent from the state forever.

“Under the leadership of chief secretary Durga Shankar Mishra, a team of top officers of various departments worked on this plan for the past eight months and recently gave a detailed presentation in front of the chief minister.

Subsequently, the chief minister has asked the officers to get involved in mission mode to implement the plan”, the spokesman said.

He added that after the UP Global Investors’ Summit, investment proposals worth Rs 36 lakh crore had been received by Uttar Pradesh. The government was now busy preparing to implement the projects on the ground. Along with significant improvement in law and order, the past six years had been very important for the state in terms of infrastructure and connectivity, he said.