Venkaiah Naidu asks civic bodies to walk the talk on public amenities

Union Urban Development Minister says Centre considering to devolve more powers to municipal bodies to improve decision making at local level

Union urban development minister Venkaiah Naidu on Monday asked municipal administrations to focus on improving urban civic services and fast track the adoption of e-governance in the respective bodies.

Speaking at the regional consultative workshop on urban governance here at the Administrative Staff College of India, Naidu said the Centre was considering devolving more powers to municipal bodies to improve decision making at the local level, and was ready to offer critical support for measures that could improve investor confidence in urban development PPP projects.

“The Centre is planning to introduce a credit rating system for municipal bodies that would allow all potential investors to know the respective municipal body's credit worthiness to repay the loan,” the minister said.

On the heightened expectations from the state governments on smart cities initiative, he said each smart city would take at least 10-15 years to fully evolve and indicated the funding for common facilities in them would necessarily come up in public private partnership (PPP) model.

In his keynote address, Naidu said Prime Minister Narendra Modi wanted every city administration to come up with a dedicated website, publish an e-magazine weekly, have digital registry of properties, a directory for urban poor and a facility that review’s the revenue and workforce of urban bodies.