India, June 23 -- The Union government has shelved the scheme to incubate eight new cities, as recommended by the 15th Finance Commission (FC), according to senior government officials. A senior official at the Union ministry of housing and urban affairs (MoHUA), on condition of anonymity, said that Rs.8,000 crore allotted for the scheme will now be subsumed under another new scheme.

A second official said that this new scheme may be designed based on ongoing deliberations between the ministry, NITI Aayog, and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) for infrastructure upgrades in smaller cities with a population of up to 100,000, as per the 2011 Census.

The decision to shelve the greenfield cities plan came after the Union government already r...