The Smart City Mission (SCM) in India is one of the highly publicized projects that focus on the ‘digital transformation’ of cities and towns across India. However, policy analysts and scholars have raised questions and concerns regarding such a transformation. The question is whether the SCM fulfills the pressing needs of towns and cities or not. New Town Kolkata is one of the cities in West Bengal which initially adopted the SCM but later rejected the program. They adopted a new state-funded project called Green City Mission. Within this context, it tries to focus on the shortcomings of the SCM and how cities in a peri-urban interface like New Town Kolkata are transformed and encounter different challenges. In addition, this paper also analyzes the newly announced Green City Mission of West Bengal and tried to understand the differences and similarities between both projects. The paper reveals that such projects failed to create employment opportunities not only for the people of the town but also for the people of the surrounding villages.