The case study of Smart Cities Mission in Bhopal provides an overview of the projects being implemented under the mission in the city. The case of Bhopal Smart City is quite distinctive in the sense that due to immense public pressure the state government was enforced to change the location of the Area Based Development (ABD) component of the smart city project to a different location than that was proposed in the original smart city challenge proposal by Bhopal Municipal Corporation (BMC). It briefly tracks the process of urban development in Bhopal over a period of more than 100 years and how from being a princely state the city has acquired its current status of a smart city now. 

BMC submitted a proposal to the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) under the smart city challenge and Bhopal was selected as the 20th city in the first round. However, the submission of the proposal faced a lot of questions and controversies due to lack of wider consultation and allegations of bogus voting on social media platforms in favour of the proposal submitted by BMC. The proposal however went through and Bhopal remained on track to becoming a ‘smart city’.