Maharashtra reins the throne! Making way to conquer your dreams, Pune, Navi Mumbai and Mumbai tops the best cities to live

NewsBharati    14-Aug-2018
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Mumbai, August 14: Mumbai is ought to be called as the ‘City of Dreams’ but ‘Maharashtra’ is definitely one of the finest state to conquer your dreams in the context of living. City of Knowledge ‘Pune’ topped the list followed by Navi Mumbai and Greater Mumbai giving Maharashtra a reason to rejoice and celebrate. These cities have been ranked as the three most livable places according to governments first-ever Ease of Living Index.

Stating the Ease of Living Index, New Delhi was figured at No. 65 among 111 cities. Housing and urban affairs minister Hardeep Singh Puri, who released the index, said the assessment was the first of its kind globally in terms of scale and coverage and the rankings marked a shift to a data-driven approach to urban planning and management while promoting healthy competition among cities.

Expressing gratitude on winning the title, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis thanked everyone for their support with a tweet. In his tweet, the Chief Minister stated that “Great & proud moment for Maharashtra! -All Top 3 liveable cities are from Maharashtra (Pune, Navi Mumbai & Mumbai) - Maharashtra has total 4 cities in the Top 10 cities - 50% of the Maharashtra cities of the total participated ranked in the National Top 20 list!”

With all gratitude and affection of thankfulness, CM Fadnavis also acclaimed the efforts taken by the Central government in ranking the cities as it encourages them to work hard and bring development.

The Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry said the cities had been evaluated on a 100-point scale across 78 indicators - institutional and social pillars carried 25 points each, economic pillar 5 points and physical pillar 45 points.

The Ease of Living Index is an initiative of the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) to assess their liveability vis-à-vis global and national benchmarks and encourage cities to move towards an "outcome based" approach to urban policy and management. The initiative was launched in June 2017 and the implementation of the assessment formally commenced on January 19, 2018 covering 111 cities.

Rampur in Uttar Pradesh figured at the bottom of the index with Chennai positioning at 14th in the exercise the ministry had undertaken to rank the country's major cities on the basis of four parameters of ease of living - governance and social, economic and physical infrastructure.

Tirupati, Chandigarh, Thane, Raipur, Indore, Vijayawada and Bhopal followed the three cities from Maharashtra in the top 10. Ahead of this list, Varanasi ranked 33rd, Ahmedabad 23rd and Hyderabad 27th position.

A data entry portal and a monitoring dashboard for real time update on progress were established. The cities submitted data on more than 50,000 points. Secondary audit of 10,000 documents, physical audit of 14,000 units and survey of over 60,000 citizens was completed and that led to finalising the index, ministry sources explained.

The Ease of Living assessment standards are closely linked to sustainable development goals (SDGs) and seek to provide impetus to India’s effort for systematic tracking progress of SDGs in urban areas. Of the 17 SDGs, 8 goals are linked to India’s ease of living assessment framework with SDG 11 that is aimed at making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.