“The PMC has scored 93 per cent marks and `A+’ rating to top in the state in monthly progress report for implementation of JNNURM projects for January,” state UDD principal secretary T C Benjamin, told The Indian Express on Saturday. The PMC was ranked first in July last year and since then was slipping downwards in the monthly progress report among the seven civic bodies with the JNNURM projects.

The PMC was the only civic body in the state to fail in achieving the project implementation benchmarks for December in the monthly progress report. It was for the second month running that PMC scored low and failed the minimum required 50 per cent marks. The PMC performance had dropped to 28 per cent in December after managing 37 per cent in November resulting in `F’ rating in both the months.

However, the sudden excellence in performance of PMC was due to the change in deadline for the implementation of projects along with the speeding up of the work to be completed for the Commonwealth Youth Games (CYG). “The target deadline for the works for PMC were revised on the consent of the state government,” Benjamin said adding the civic body has given a push to many of its projects in last month.

Municipal Commissioner Pravinsinh Pardeshi had urged the state government to revise the civic body’s target for the implementation of work after attributing the poor scores in November and December to the delay in getting approvals from the standing committee of PMC. The state government had recently revised the target for completion of projects for CYG from May end to August end.“Even though the development work has taken off late, we will definitely complete them before the Commonwealth Youth Game begins,” Pardeshi had said.

With the PMC gaining the top position in January, the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) that ranked first in December has dropped to second position with 87 per cent marks while the neighbouring Pimpri Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) slipped to third position from the second position by scoring 85 per cent. The performance of other municipal corporations was Nagpur Municipal Corporation (76 per cent), Thane Municipal Corporation (70 per cent), Nasik Municipal Corporation (69 per cent) and Nanded Municipal Corporation (15 per cent).

Maharashtra is leading state in the country in implementation of JNNURM works followed by Andhra Pradesh.