Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs launches 2 key initiatives

Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs launches 2 key initiatives

Subject: Polity

Context: Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs launches 2 key initiatives to take India’s Urban Rejuvenation journey to next level. The two key initiatives of Ministry are ‘City Finance Rankings, 2022’ and ‘City Beauty Competition’.

About City Finance Rankings:

• City Finance Rankings, 2022 aim to evaluate, recognize and reward India’s cities (Urban Local Bodies or ULBs) on the basis of the quality of their current financial health and improvement over time in financial performance.
• The participating ULBs will be evaluated on 15 indicators across three key municipal finance assessment parameters, namely: (i) Resource Mobilization, (ii) Expenditure Performance and (iii) Fiscal Governance.
• The cities will be ranked at the national level on the basis of their scores under any one of the following four population categories: (i) Above 4 million (ii) Between 1-4 million (iii) 100K to 1 million (iv) Less than 100,000.
• The top 3 cities in each population category will be recognized and rewarded at the national level as well as within each state/state cluster.
• All 4500+ cities / urban local bodies (ULBs) across all states/UTs would be encouraged to participate in the City Finance Rankings 2022.
• The rankings will serve as a constant motivation for city/state officials to continue to implement municipal finance reforms.

About City Beauty Competition:

• City Beauty Competition aims to encourage and recognize the transformational efforts made by cities and wards in India to create beautiful, innovative and inclusive public spaces.
• Wards and public places of cities would be judged against the five broad pillars (i) accessibility (ii) amenities (iii) activities (iv) aesthetics and (v) ecology.
• The City Beauty Competition would felicitate most beautiful wards and beautiful public places at the city level.
• Entries by wards and cities would be evaluated by an Independent Jury that may comprise experts from different fields like urban planning, design, engineering, culture experts, environmentalists and others.
• Participation in the City Beauty Competition is voluntary.