First stage of smart cities mission starts

News:

• The first stage of the city challenge competition for inclusion of cities and towns in the government’s Smart cities mission got underway.
• 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 ), institutional systems and capacities (15 points), self-financing (30 points) and past track record and reforms (30 points).
• The other criteria to be used for evaluation 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).
• 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.

Source: ET