The Jammu district has emerged on top of the first ‘District Good Governance Index’ to be released on Saturday for the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K), while Srinagar district has come at the fifth position, News18 has reliably learnt.
The index will be released by Union Home Minister Amit Shah on Saturday and the same is to assess the status of governance and impact of various interventions taken up by central and UT governments in J&K. The erstwhile state of J&K was split into two Union Territories in 2019 and the Centre took direct charge. The 20 districts in the UT of J&K were assessed now in 10 sectors.
News18 has learnt that Jammu district topped the composite ranking, followed by Doda and Samba districts of the Jammu Division. This was followed by Pulwama district of the Srinagar Division at fourth spot and Srinagar district at the fifth. The district of Rajouri finished at the last spot, while Poonch and Shopian districts also featured towards the end of the rankings.
A senior official said there was very marginal difference among the 20 districts in their composite score, showing all-round development in the UT. The 20 districts were also separately ranked under the various sectors. Jammu district ranked best on ‘Commerce and Industry’ sector, while Srinagar district ranked best on the ‘Public Infrastructure and Utilities’ sector.
A government official said that in addition to the capital districts of Jammu and Srinagar, other districts have also performed well and topped several sectoral rankings.
Kishtwar topped in ‘Agriculture and Allied Sector’, Pulwama topped in ‘Human Resource Development’, Reasi topped in ‘Public Health’, Ramban topped in ‘Social Welfare and Development’, and Ganderbal topped in the ‘Financial Inclusion’ sector, it is learnt.
This District Good Governance Index supports in assessing gaps in infrastructure, service delivery and processes, and identifies strong and weak areas for immediate improvements and measure progress on a periodic basis, officials say. This exercise to prepare the index helped the UT administration in revision of data points of the annual Digest of Statistics of J&K, it is learnt.
In the country-wide ‘Good Governance Index’ released last month by the Centre, J&K had registered an improvement in its indicators over 2019. The district-level index in J&K, a first for any UT, shows sector-wise score attained by the districts is reflective of strong performance by them in one or the other sector, officials said.