CITIIS is the main component of the ‘Supporting Smart Cities Mission for a more Inclusive and Sustainable Urban Development in India’ launched by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs in, 2018. The program aims at putting in place a complementary instrument to the Smart Cities Mission that provides a financing incentive and technical support to demonstrative projects selected in a competitive process. The program develops peer learning activities and cooperation between smart cities to enhance the capitalization of best practices at state and national levels.

• The program is conceptualized to assist Indian cities in implementing urban infrastructure projects that are integrated, innovation driven and sustainable.CITIIS combines financial assistance through loans and technical assistance through grants to the selected cities. This assistance focuses on strengthening institutions by committing resources to systematic planning (maturation phase) before implementation.
• Puducherry is one of the 12 Citiesselected out of 100participants which have participated in the challenge process. The selected projects will improve sustainable mobility, increase the amount of public open spaces, implement technology to improve e-governance and drive social and organizational innovation in low income settlements.
• Puducherry was selected in the CITIIS challenge under the theme of social and organizational innovation in low income settlements.
• Puducherry has adopted a participative planning methodology for conceptualizing and structuring the project, the process began with stakeholder identification and mapping, the identified stakeholders were consistently engaged through the maturation phase of the project and the stakeholders will be engaged in monitoring the implementation of the project and in evaluation of the outcomes of the project.