Pune tops Ease of Living Index; New Delhi ranks 65

New Delhi, Aug 13: Three cities of Maharashtra - Pune, Navi Mumbai and Greater Mumbai - are the most livable places in the country, according to the ranking of 111 cities on the Ease of Living Index released by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs on Monday. The national capital Delhi languished at the 65th spot.

According to the ministry, Greater Mumbai has been ranked three, followed by Triputi, Chandigarh, Thane, Raipur, Indore, Vijayawada and Bhopal.

Chennai has been ranked 14th, while Kolkata did not participate in the survey. Kohima (Nagaland) and Patna (Bihar) were also placed in the bottom-three. The survey was conducted in 111 cities in the country.

Varanasi is at 33rd place, Ahmedabad at 23rd and Hyderabad at 27th.

This is the first-ever exercise undertaken by the ministry to rank the country's major cities on the basis of four parameters of ease of living -- governance, social, economic and physical infrastructure.

The ministry said evaluation of cities has been done on a 100-point scale across 78 indicators -- institutional and social pillars carried 25 points each, 5 points were given for economic pillar and 45 points for the physical pillar.

Releasing the index, Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said this assessment is first of its kind globally in terms of scale and coverage and the ranking marks a shift to a data-driven approach to urban planning and management and promotes healthy competition among cities.

No city from Uttar Pradesh or Tamil Nadu figured in the top-ten.

While Rampur is ranked the lowest, those in the bottom-ten also include Kohima, Patna, Bihar Sharif, Bhagalpur, Itanagar, Pasighat, Kavaratti, Saharanpur and Silvassa.

Srinagar is ranked 100th, Jammu at 95th, Panaji 90th, Aligarh 86th, Gurugram at 88th and Meerut is 101st. Ghaziabad is ranked 46th and Rai Bareli is at 49th.

After the ten most livable cities, Karim Nagar (Telangana) has been ranked 11th, followed by Tiruchirappalli, Bilaspur, Channai, Jabalpur, Amravati, Visakhapatnam, Bhubaneswar, Surat, Vasai-Virar city, Nashik, Solarpur, Ahmedabad, Ujjain, Coimbatore, Erode, Hydrabad, Madurai, Tiruppur, Jainpur, Nagpur and Gwalior among others.