First stage of city challenge competition for Smart Cities mission starts

NEW DELHI: The first stage of the city challenge competition for inclusion of cities and towns in the government’s Smart Cities mission got underway with the union urban development ministry asking state governments to nominate names by July 31, 2015.

According to the operational guidelines for the Smart Cities mission that was released by the PM Narendra Modi last month, states have to nominate the assigned number of cities and towns from each state based on four broad criteria and a total of 13 sub-criteria.

The four broad criteria include existing service levels in city/town (25 points out of 100), institutional systems and capacities (15 points), self-financing (30 points) and past track record and reforms (30 points).

Every state government has to evaluate all cities/towns in that state based on these criteria and nominate the top performers as per the number assigned to each state. For instance, Uttar Pradesh is entitled to nominate 13 cities/towns for inclusion in the mission.

According to the weightages given for each criterion in the mission guidelines, the present status of e-governance and revenue mobilization and financial strength of urban local bodies dominate the stage-1 evaluation criteria accounting for 60 of the total 100 points. Eight of the total 13 sub-criteria are related to e-governance and financial strength including revenue mobilization of urban local bodies, the urban development ministry said in a statement.

The other criteria to be used for evaluation of smart city aspirants in stage-1 of city challenge competition include the percentage of increase over Census 2011 in providing household toilets (10 points), imposing penalties for delay in service delivery (5 points), audit of accounts up to 2012-13 (5 points), progress in respect of six urban local body level reforms (10 points) and percentage of JNNURM projects implemented (10 points).

"The 100 smart city nominations received from all states and union territories will be put through stage-2 of the competition based on an elaborate criteria before funds are released to the top 20 cities and towns during the current financial year,” it said.