New Delhi, Sep 11 (IANS): Union Urban Development Minister M. Venkaiah Naidu will interact with mayors, municipal chairpersons and commissioners of 20 smart cities on Saturday in Kolkata.

This regional workshop on Smart Cities will also be attended by union Minister of State for Urban Development Babul Supriyo and senior officials from these states.

"Naidu will broadly outline the challenges to be addressed for building smart cities including the need for a forward looking and visionary leadership by both the elected and executive heads of these cities, need for urban governance reforms and an enabling environment for mobilisation of resources required for Smart City Mission, a government statement said.

The 20 cities of the Smart City Mission include New Town, Bidhanpur, Durgapur and Haldia from West Bengal, Muzaffarpur, Bhagalpur and Bihar Sharif from Bihar, Bhubaneswar and Rourkela from Odisha, Raipur and Bilaspur from Chhattisgarh, Ranchi from Jharkhand, and Namchi in Sikkim.

These also include seven northeastern cities Guwahati (Assam), Pasighat (Arunachal Pradesh), Imphal, (Manipur), Shillong (Meghalaya), Aizawl (Mizoram), Kohima (Nagaland) and Agartala (Tripura).