Housing Minister releases guidelines for new ranking system of cities
Union Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri, on Wednesday, launched the draft guidelines for a new ranking system of cities based on financial performance and beautification.
“City Finance Rankings 2022 aims to evaluate, recognise and reward urban local bodies on the basis of their strength across financial parameters that include resource mobilisation, expenditure performance and fiscal governance systems,” Hardeep Singh Puri, Union Minister of Housing & Urban Affairs and Petroleum & Natural Gas, said.
Transformative efforts
According to the Minister, the ‘City Beauty Competition’ initiative, has been launched to encourage and recognise transformational efforts made by the cities and wards in the country towards creating beautiful, innovative and inclusive public spaces.
The ‘City Finance Rankings, 2022’ aim to evaluate, recognise and reward India’s cities on the basis of the quality of their current financial health and improvement over time in financial performance.
Urban local bodies
The participating urban local bodies will be evaluated on 15 indicators and will be ranked at the national level on the basis of their scores under any one of the existing four population categories that include ‘above 4 million’, ‘between 1 and 4 million’; from ‘100,000 to 10,00,000’ and ‘less than 100,000’.
The top 3 cities in each population category will be recognised and rewarded at the national level as well as within each State/State cluster.
According to a government statement, City Finance Rankings is an effort to analyse and help the urban local bodies in identifying areas in their financial performance where they can make further improvements, deliver quality infrastructure and services to its citizens.
“At a State- and national-level, the rankings will highlight the outcomes achieved by municipalities and provide critical insights to key policy makers into the State of finances of urban local bodies,” it said.
Inclusive public spaces
Meanwhile, the City Beauty Competition aims at encouraging and recognising transformational efforts made by cities and wards in the country to create beautiful, innovative and inclusive public spaces.
Wards and public places of cities would be judged against the five broad pillars, namely, accessibility, amenities, activities, aesthetics and ecology.
“Selected wards would be felicitated at the city and State levels,” the statement said adding that at the city level, beautification of places like waterfronts, green spaces, tourist/heritage spaces and market/commercial places would be awarded first at the State and then shortlisted for award at the National level.
Competing wards and cities would submit their entries on the city beauty portal which would be designed by the Ministry’s knowledge partners — Administrative Staff College of India.
