Venkaiah Naidu slams civic bodies for dismal state of urban areas

NEW DELHI: Pulling up the civic bodies for the "dismal" state of affairs in urban areas, Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu today said they will be have to bring in radical changes in functioning to be "creditworthy" for selection in the urban renewal project.

The Urban Development Minister said the states will be asked to introduce credit rating of cities "for which we are working on a framework".

Urban mobility and sanitation has come to be a nightmare adversely affecting quality of urban life and there are haphazard urban expansion due to poor planning and execution, Naidu said and blamed the "uninspiring leadership" at both bureaucratic and political level in urban local bodies for the situation.

"The business as usual approach will not help anymore and there has to be a radical reorientation of mindsets on the part of all those concerned with management of urban affairs," he said at the consultative workshop on urban governance for municipal commissioners of northern states here.

The Ministry is finalising plans for launching development schemes for 500 cities across the country including Smart City and Heritage City projects.

"We will be launching City Challenge campaign for selecting cities and towns for participation in Smart City and 500 cities initiatives soon," he said, adding the states will be asked to introduce credit rating of cities and a framework is being worked upon.

Naidu said there is a requirement of huge resources such as Rs 40 lakh crore investment for provision of infrastructure in urban areas besides another Rs 20 lakh crores for operation and mainteanance of urban assets and utilities over a 20 year period.

"The desired resource mobilisation through lending and other means will depend on credit worthiness of urban local bodies. We need to enable them to become creditworthy," he said.

Asking the urban civic bodies to "perform and become credit worthy", he said "the emerging opportunities could be made use of effectively if only necessary initiatives were taken in right earnest."