First Stage of Smart City – City Challenge Competition Begins
The competition for the selection of 100 smart cities is fierce. State governments across the country have started proposing the towns, regions and cities to be developed as smart cities in their respective states. Several countries and international organisations too have come forward to help the governments develop some of these cities. The central government also officially launched the smart city mission on June 25th this year. It assigned the number of towns and cities each state can nominate for the development initiative as well as the criteria for nominating them.
In line with the launch of the scheme, the union urban development ministry has asked the state governments to send their nominations by July 31st this year, marking the commencement of the first stage of the city challenge competition.
City challenge competition
The city challenge competition is being conducted by the central government in order to select a town, region or city to be developed as a smart city. The competition will link the central government’s financial aid with the ability of the cities to perform so that they can achieve the objectives of a smart city. According to this challenge, state governments will submit their nominations that will be graded on criteria such as revenue generation, development partnerships and credit worthiness.
Smart cities mission guidelines
The centre has laid down certain operational guidelines for the smart city mission. According to this, states will have to nominate the assigned number of towns, regions or cities from their respective states based on four broad criteria and a total of 13 sub-criteria.
The four broad criteria together will have a total weightage of 100 points/marks. These criteria include existing service levels in the town/city (25 points), institutional systems and capacities (15 points), past track record and reforms (30 points) and self-financing (30 points). Eight of the total 13 sub-criteria deal with e-governance and financial strength, including the revenue mobilisation of local bodies, accounting to a total of 60 points/marks.
The state governments will have to evaluate all the towns and cities in the state against these criteria and nominate the top performers in accordance with the number assigned to the respective state. For example, Uttar Pradesh has been assigned 13 nominations. Hence, the state government has to evaluate the towns and cities in the state and nominate 13 top performers for the mission.
City challenge completion – Stage 1
Out of these broad and sub-criteria, the present status of e-governance, revenue mobilization and financial strength of the local urban bodies, accounting to 60 points, dominate stage 1 of the city challenge competition. Other criteria that will be used in stage 1 evaluation will be percentage increase in providing household toilets since census 2011 (10 points), account audits up to 2012-13 (5 points), imposition of penalty for service delivery delays (5 points), percentage of JNNURM projects implemented (10 points) and progress in terms of six ULB level (urban local bodies) reforms (10 points).
After receiving the 100 nominations from all states in the first stage of the competition, they will be put through the second stage of the competition based on an elaborate criteria. After this, funds will be released for the top 20 towns and cities during the financial year 2015-16.
