Niti Aayog aspirational districts: Virudhunagar in Tamil Nadu tops list, Naupada in Odisha least improved

Virudhunagar: Virudhunagar in Tamil Nadu, Naupada in Odisha and Sidharthnagar in Uttar Pradesh have emerged as the top three districts in Niti Aayog's ranking of aspirational districts.

NITI Aayog on Thursday released the second delta ranking of the 'Aspirational Districts Programme', which was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on January 5 this year.

Pakur in Jharkhand, Hailakandi in Assam and Chatra in Jharkhand are the three least-improved aspirational districts, according to the second delta ranking.

The first delta ranking for aspirational districts was released in June 2018.

The scheme ‘Transformation of Aspirational Districts’ was launched by Prime Minister Modi aiming at quickly and effectively transforming districts, which have been underperforming.

The programme ensures convergence of Central and state schemes, collaboration of central, state officers and district collectors, and competition among districts.

The programme also aims at improving the living standards of its citizens and ensuring inclusive growth for all under 'Sabka Saath Sabka Vikas'. Special attention is given to areas like health and nutrition, education, agriculture and water resources, financial inclusion and skill development, and basic infrastructure.

Niti Aayog has created a dashboard for monitoring the real-time progress of the districts in partnership with the Andhra Pradesh government. District Information Officers underwent training on March 23, 2018 regarding how to enter data on to the dashboard and generate MIS (Management Information System) reports. The data was being entered from April 1, this year. Accordingly, the districts have been ranked based on progress made on real-time basis.

Thus, when compared to the 111 aspirational districts between June 1 and October 31, 2018, across the above said developmental areas, here is the list of districts that have been declared improved and least improved.

Here is the list of file least improved districts:

In the Education sector, Virudhanagar (Tamil Nadu); Nuapada (Odisha); Gumla (Jharkhand) are the three in topping the list. But Malkangiri (Odisha); Yadgir (Karnataka) and Pakur (Jharkhand) have got the last three places.

In the health and nutrition sector, Chitrakoot (Uttar Pradesh), Barwani (Madhya Pradesh) and Vidisha (Madhya Pradesh) have occupied the first three spots, whereas Chatra (Jharkhand), Pakur (Jharkhand) and Hazaribagh (Jharkhand) have occupied the last three spots.

In agriculture and water resources sector Sitamarhi (Bihar), Gajapati (Odisha) and Dhalal (Tripura) are the most improved districts and Giridih (Jharkhand), Hailakandi (Assam) and Begusarai (Bihar) are the least improved districts.