Context: Recently, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs has launched 2 key initiatives: City Finance Rankings 2022 and City Beauty Competition.

About City Finance Rankings 2022

• To evaluate, recognize and reward urban local bodies (ULBs) on basis of their strength across 15 indicators and 3 financial parameters: resource mobilization, expenditure performance and fiscal governance systems.

• Evaluation will be done on the basis of quality of current financial health and improvement with time in financial performance.

Cities will be ranked at national level on the basis of their scores under following four population categories-

• Above 4 million.

• Between 1-4 million.

• 100K to 1 million.

• Less than 100,000.

• Top 3 cities in each population category will be rewarded.

• It will help ULBs to identify areas in their financial performance where they can make improvements and able to deliver quality infrastructure and services to its citizens.

• Rankings will motivate city/state officials and decision makers, to implement municipal finance reforms.

About City Beauty Competition

• To encourage and recognize transformational efforts made by cities and wards in India to create beautiful, innovative and inclusive public spaces.

• Wards and public places of cities would be judged against five pillars- Accessibility; Amenities; Activities; Aesthetics and Ecology.

• Most beautiful public places in cities would be awarded first at State level and then will be shortlisted for award at the National level.

• It will encourage urban local bodies to improve their basic infrastructure and make urban spaces beautiful, sustainable and inclusive.

• Participation in the City Beauty Competition is voluntary.