Tirupati and Vijayawada from Andhra Pradesh have been ranked in the top 10 most liveable places in the country, according to the Ease of Living Index — a report released by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs on Monday.
As part of the survey, a total of 111 cities were reviewed. While Tirupati was ranked fourth in the list, Vijayawada came in at 9.
The top 10 cities as per the rankings are: Pune, Navi Mumbai, Greater Mumbai, Tirupati, Chandigarh, Thane, Raipur, Indore, Vijayawada and Bhopal.
From Telangana, Karimnagar secured the 11th spot while Hyderabad was at 27. Chennai was ranked number 14.
Interestingly, New Delhi bagged the 65th spot while Rampur in Uttar Pradesh stood last.
This was the inaugural review done by the ministry on major cities. The cities were ranked based on four parameters--governance, social, economic and physical infrastructure.
Tirupati featured in the top 10 owing to its social aspect. It secured the first place in social institution category. Tirupati scored 57.52 marks out of 100 in the survey.
On individual parameters, Vijayawada was ranked 9th for its institutional aspect, 8th for social aspect and 10th for economic aspect.
Visakhapatnam too found a mention in the rankings. The city was ranked 10th for institutional aspect and 10th in physical aspect.
The ministry said that the 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.
Soon after the announcement was made by Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri, Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister N Chandrababu Naidu took to Twitter to express his happiness. “Congratulating the citizens and officials of Tirupati and Vijayawada for performing well on the #EaseOfLiving survey done by @MoHUA_India in which 111 cities were assessed on the basis of Institutional, Social, Economic and Physical aspects.”