The City Beautiful has plunged from fifth rank to 29th in the ‘ease of living index 2020’ released by the Central Government on Thursday. Chandigarh also failed to find its place in the best performing municipalities and had to be content with 23rd rank in the ‘municipal performance index’.

In the category of cities with a population of above one million, Chandigarh-the first planned city of Independent India was ranked 29th among 111 cities with an average score of 53.51 points out of 100 in the ‘ease of living index’ (EoLI).

In 2018, Chandigarh was ranked as fifth most liveable city in the country with a score of 53.16 points.

This time, Bengaluru in Karnataka emerged as the best city in the government’s EoLI while in the less than million population category, Shimla in Himachal was ranked the highest in ease of living.

The ease of living index was based on four pillars including quality of life, economic ability, sustainability and citizen perception spanning across categories of education, health, housing and shelter, mobility, safety and security, recreation, level of economic development, economic opportunities, environment, green spaces among others.

The city fared badly in the ranking of economic ability which is seen as a major factor to the poor performance in the EoLI. It was ranked 34th with a low score of 9.90 in economic ability. The economic category evaluated the cities on increase in tax collection and construction permits, unemployment rate and percentage of vendors registered and provided formal spaces.

In terms of quality of life, Chandigarh, which is a joint capital of Punjab and Haryana, managed to get 20th rank with a score of 54.42. While the overall performance remained poor, Chandigarh emerged as a best city in terms of education with first rank and 83.27 score.

Among other parameters, the city was ranked at 12th position with a score of 60.13 in terms of sustainability and 35th rank with a score of 72.80 percent in citizen perception.

The union territory continued to disappoint when it came to the performance of the civic body. The municipal performance index (MPI) examined the local government practice in five areas of services, finance, policy, technology and governance with 20 varied sectors namely revenue management, expenditure management, fiscal responsibility, fiscal decentralisation, digital governance, digital access, digital literacy, plan preparation, plan implementation, plan enforcement, transparency and accountability, human resource among others.

With 23rd ranking, the average city score of Chandigarh was 43.13. In terms of finance management, it was ranked at 37th position with a score of 48.68 percent. As far as planning is concerned, the civic body was ranked at poor 43 with a low score of 26.77 points.

The cash-strapped municipal corporation of Chandigarh managed to score 60.69 points achieving 15th rank in services, 14th rank with a score of 32.77 in technology and 13th rank with a score of 54.19 in governance.

Notably, the MPI assessment was undertaken for the first time in the country.