Disability rights groups are urging the Centre to build smart cities that abide by international planning norms and are completely barrier free. While the Smart Cities Mission had until now been called non-inclusive for largely overlooking providing facilities and provisions for persons with disabilities, the new national building code (NBC) prepared by the Bureau of Indian Standards, which was released by the Ministry of Consumer Affairs on March 15, appears to have now provided a solution to making smart cities disabled-friendly and completely barrier-free. Disability rights activists are now also calling for the Centre to formulate guidelines or a template for making a few model smart cities with disabled-friendly features, so it can be replicated in all other projects. These developments come at a time when round three of the smart cities project in underway, where a list of cities will be shortlisted for inclusion in the project. Sixty cities have been shortlisted so far following two rounds.

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