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Context

• The Central government launched two major initiatives aimed at incentivising urban local bodies for improving cities’ public infrastructure and strengthening them on basis of key financial parameters.
• The City Finance Rankings 2022 and City Beauty Competition are the two initiatives which were launched by Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry.
• The Union government also launched guidelines for a new finance-based ranking of cities. The rankings are aimed at motivating city and State officials to implement municipal financial reforms.

Guidelines and Further Details

• While the City Finance Rankings has been launched to evaluate, recognise, and reward urban local bodies on the basis of their strength across key financial parameters, the City Beauty Competition aims to encourage and recognise the transformational efforts made by cities and wards in India to create beautiful, innovative and inclusive public spaces.
• City Finance Rankings aim to motivate city and state officials and decision-makers, to implement municipal finance reforms. The participating urban local bodies will be evaluated on 15 indicators across three key municipal finance assessment parameters like resource mobilisation, expenditure performance, and fiscal governance. The effort is also aimed at identifying areas in the financial performance of the cities where they can make further improvements. This will enable them to deliver quality infrastructure and services, and hence a good quality of life to citizens.
• A separate ranking will also evaluate cities on beautification.
• The cities will be ranked at the national level on the basis of their scores under any one of the following four population categories: above 40 lakh, between 10-40 lakh, 1 lakh to 10 lakh and less than one lakh.
• The top three cities in each population category will be recognised and rewarded at the national level as well as within each state and state cluster.
• Under the City Beauty Competition, wards and public places of cities would be judged against the five broad pillars of accessibility, amenities, activities, aesthetics and ecology. 
• All cities and urban local bodies, which are more than 4,500 in number, would be encouraged to participate in the City Finance Rankings 2022.

https://www.thehindu.com/news/national/guidelines-for-finance-and-beauty-based-ranking-of-cities-launched/article66314234.ece

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