3 Jharkhand districts top in Niti's development ranking

Three Jharkhand districts of Chatra Sahibganj, and Hazaribagh have topped in the ranking of aspirational districts by Niti Aayog for the December-January period of 2018-19.

The ranking released by Niti Aayog CEO Amitabh Kant on Wednesday showed that these three districts of Jharkhand have also performed well in 'health and nutrition' parameters.

Sonbhadra (Uttar Pradesh), Sahibganj (Jharkhand) and Chatra (Jharkhand) emerged as top three ranking districts on the education parameter.

The delta rankings measures the incremental progress made by 112 aspirational districts in December 2018-January 2019 across six developmental areas.

The development areas include health and nutrition, education, agriculture and water resources, financial inclusion, skill development, and basic infrastructure.

The aspirational district programme was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on January 5, 2018.

Of 115 aspirational districts, only 112 participated in the survey. Three aspirational districts from West Bengal did not participate.

The programme aims to rapidly transform districts that have shown relatively lesser progress in key social areas and have emerged as pockets of under-development, thereby posing a challenge to ensure balanced regional development.

The first delta ranking for aspirational districts was released in June 2018.