The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs has come up with a “20-20 formula”, under which 20 best performing smart cities have been paired up with 20 bottom cities to help them learn from the experiences of their counterparts in terms of executing developmental projects.
The ministry has internally ranked 20 best performing cities that include Ahmedabad (1st rank), Agra, Amravati, Bhopal, Dehradun, Kanpur, Nagpur, Ranchi, Surat, Tiruppur, Indore, Vellore, Vadodara, Visakhapatnam, Nashik, Varanasi, Davanagere, Kota, Pune and Udaipur, according to the media reports.
These cities will act as “sister cities” to cities like Shimla, Dharamsala, Amritsar, Diu and Saharanpur and share ideas with them to improve their performance. For example, Ranchi and Pune will pair with Shimla and Dharamsala respectively and Varanasi, a holy city, has been paired up with another holy city Amritsar which need to improve its performance under the Smart Cities Mission.
“The pair of sister cities will have to sign an MoU before February 20 to ensure expeditious execution of projects and report compliance to the Smart Cities Mission Directorate,” an official was quoted as saying.
The sister cities will have 100-day to help the bottom 20 cities improve their ranks and performance.
