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Our Correspondent
Kohima, March 3 (EMN): After being ranked the second most ‘unliveable’ city in India in the Ease of Living Index 2018, all eyes are on Nagaland’s state capital Kohima as the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) is poised to announce the Ease of Living Index and the Municipal Performance Index 2020 to assess the ease of Living and local governance practice in cities across the country on March 4.
In the 2018 edition, Kohima was ranked in the 110th position out of 111 cities in the country in the survey conducted by MoHUA to help assess the progress made in urban environments through various initiatives. Minister of state for Housing and Urban Affairs, Hardeep S Puri would launch the 2020 results on March 4 from 12:30 pm onwards.
The event would be live streamed and could be witnessed on Facebook at smartcitiesmohua, while other details could also be accessed through mohua.gov.in/, eol.smartcities.gov.in/home and competetiveness.in.
It may be recalled that the ministry had launched the ease of living index 2019 for 114 cities including all the 100 smart cities in the country. The index aimed at assessing the ease of living of citizens living in the cities across four pillars of quality of life and 15 categories such as education, health, housing and shelter, mobility, safety and security, recreation, economic development, economic opportunities, energy consumption and city resilience etc and 78 other indicators.
Meanwhile, in the Ease of Living Index (EOLI) 2019-2020 assessment, citizens’ perception survey was added as an integral component to help directly capture the perception of the citizens with respect to ease of living in their cities, wherein, the citizens survey on the theme “My City My Pride” was assigned a weightage of 30% under EOLI launched on January 24 till February 29 in 2019.
In this regard, the chief executive officer (CEO) of Kohima Smart City Development Limited (KSDCL) Kovi Meyase, in a statement on Wednesday informed that the citizens engagement covered an array of activities where support of media, NGOs, ward functionaries and citizens played a big role. He added that the response and support shown by the stakeholders was overwhelming.
It may be mentioned that the CEO had earlier released a statement claiming that “dismal ranking of Kohima city was not necessarily because of the lack of facilities and infrastructure but mainly because of lack of awareness among government agencies as well as citizens, lack of coordination between departments, lack of data in the departments and late submission of data which delayed compilation-sorting-final uploading”.
In the 2018 survey, Rampur in Uttar Pradesh, Kohima and Bihar’s capital Patna were among the most unliveable cities among 111 cities measured on four broad parameters -- governance, social, physical and economic infrastructure. Pune, Navi Mumbai and Greater Mumbai in Maharashtra were the three most liveable cities in India.