Bhubaneswar: After receiving good response from Smart City scheme, the Modi government has proposed similar scheme for the Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) which will be selected through a national-level competition.
Like Smart City scheme, a competition among the states would be conducted for the scheme for Transformational Urban Reforms through Performance Based Initiative for States/ULBs. It is a Central scheme to be funded by World Bank, official sources said here Thursday.
As the state’s capital city Bhubaneswar scored top position in the Smart City completion, the state government has started full preparations to be ranked top in this competition too. The housing and urban development (H&UD) department has asked the two smart cities (Bhubaneswar and Rourkela) and nine towns covered under Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) to take all necessary steps to qualify for the challenge, the officials said.
The scheme will be implemented in two phases. In the first phase, five states including one from north east will be selected and financial assistance of USD 500 million will be provided to these states. A state can include a maximum of five towns covered under Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) under the scheme, they said.
The five states would be selected through a three-stage national competition and the scheme would be executed during financial year 2018-19.
During the second phase, another eight states would be covered under the scheme and those states would get USD 1 billion.
The objective of the scheme is to strengthen the institutional, financial and accountability system of the selected ULBs. The scheme will support and incentivise the states and civic bodies by providing performance-based incentive grants for implementing reforms.
The states would be selected based on the number of AMRUT towns present in the state (50 per cent), past performance on execution of reforms in AMRUT towns (10 per cent), projects awarded under AMRUT (10 per cent), projects awarded under the Smart City scheme (10 per cent), ULBs declared as open defecation free (10 per cent) and execution of housing for all (10 per cent).
However, the state government has objected to providing 50 per cent weightage for the number of AMRUT towns present in a state. Chief Secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi Thursday wrote a letter to Union housing and urban affairs secretary Durga Shanker Mishra in this regard.
“Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs is contemplating to accord 50 per cent weightage on number of AMRUT cities in each state i.e. essentially on the level of urbanization in the state. A higher weightage on this selection criterion may serve as a potential barrier to entry in the scheme for many states while states like Orissa despite having high performance levels in the reform implementation in recent years will be in a much disadvantageous position,” Padhi told Mishra.
Orissa was ranked 3rd and 2nd in the country in achieving AMRUT reforms implementation during 2015-16 and 2016-17 respectively.
“In view of the above, we would suggest that 20 per cent weightage may be accorded on ‘number of AMRUT cities in each state’ criteria and remaining 80 per cent weightage may be accorded on other performance parameters that are objective, measurable and verifiable,” the Chief Secretary suggested.
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