<P> New Delhi has been selected as one of the hundred Indian cities to be developed as a smart city under Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi's flagship Smart Cities Mission . </P> <P> Calcutta (now Kolkata) was the capital of India during the British Raj until December 1911 . </P> <P> Delhi had served as the political and financial centre of several empires of ancient India and the Delhi Sultanate, most notably of the Mughal Empire from 1649 to 1857 . During the early 1900s, a proposal was made to the British administration to shift the capital of the British Indian Empire, as India was officially named, from Calcutta on the east coast, to Delhi . The Government of British India felt that it would be logistically easier to administer India from Delhi in the centre of northern India . </P> <P> The land for building the new city of Delhi was acquired under the Land Acquisition Act 1894 . </P>

Why did the british shifted the capital from calcutta to delhi