Criterial for selection of 'Smart Cities' announced

Given the challenges involved in developing the proposed 100 smart cities, only the capable cities will be chosen under the programme through a two-stage competition.
This was indicated in the Operation Guidelines for Smart Cities Mission released by Prime Minister Narendra Modi while launching the Mission here today.
The selection criteria to be used in both the stages of competition was elaborated in the guidelines.
In the stage-1 of 'City Challenge Competition', each state and Union Territory will score all their cities based on a set of criteria and nominate the top scorers as per the indicated number of potential smart cities for participation in the stage-2 of competition.

According to a senior Urban Development official, the evaluation criteria for stage-1 of competition within the state/UT involves points system, such as existing service levels (25 points), institutional systems and capacities (15 points), self-financing (30 points) and past track record (30 points).
Existing service levels includes increase in service levels over Census 2011, an operational Online Grievance Redressal System, publication of at least first monthly e-newsletter and online publication of municipal budget expenditure details for the last two financial years on website.

Institutional systems and capacities covers imposition of penalties for delays in service delivery and improvement in internal resource generation over the last three years.

Self-financing would be reflected in payment of salaries by urban local bodies up to last month, auditing of accounts up to FY 2012-13, contribution of internal revenues to the Budget for 2014-15 and percentage of establishment and maintenance cost of water supply met through user charges during 2014-15.
Past track record is percentage of JNNURM projects completed which were sanctioned till 2012, percentage of city level reforms achieved under JNNURM and extent of capital expenditure met from internal resources.
The 100 potential smart cities nominated by all the states and UTs based on stage-1 criteria will prepare 'Smart City Plans' which will be rigorously evaluated in the stage-2 of the competition for prioritising cities for financing. In the first round of this stage, 20 top scorers will be chosen for financing during this financial year.

The remaining would be asked to make up the deficiencies identified by the Apex Committee in the Ministry of Urban Development for participation in the next two rounds of competition. 40 cities each will be selected for financing during the next rounds of competition.