Housing Minister Hardeep Singh Puri on December 28, 2022, released draft guidelines for ranking cities based on their financial performance and beautification.
The City Finance Rankings 2022 aim to evaluate, recognise and reward urban-local bodies (ULBs) on the basis of the quality of their current financial health and improvement over time in financial performance. The rankings aim to motivate city/state officials and decision makers to implement municipal finance reforms.
The City Beauty Competition 2022 on the other hand aims to encourage and recognise the transformational efforts made by cities and wards in India to create beautiful, innovative and inclusive public spaces.
“India has embarked on most ambitious plan of urban rejuvenation undertaken anywhere across in the world. A healthy sense of competition gives the best performing cities a sense of pride,” Puri said at the event launch.
In the City Finance Rankings 2022, the participating ULBs will be evaluated on 15 indicators across three key municipal finance assessment parameters, including resource mobilization, expenditure performance and fiscal governance.
“It is also an effort to analyse and help the ULBs in identifying areas in their financial performance, where they can make further improvements to be able to deliver quality infrastructure and services and hence a good quality of life to its citizens,” Manoj Joshi, secretary, housing ministry, told PTI.
In the City Beauty Competition 2022, wards and public places of cities would be judged against the five broad pillars of accessibility, amenities, activities, aesthetics and ecology.
“It is hoped that healthy competition amongst wards and cities would encourage urban local bodies to improve their basic infrastructure, and also make the urban spaces beautiful, sustainable and inclusive,” a ministry release said.
Cities can submit their comments till January 15, 2023, on the guidelines. After this, these will be finalized and published by January 30, 2023.
