NEW DELHI: The union ministry of housing and urban affairs (MoHUA) on Wednesday formed five new working groups to recommend reforms that will transform how Indian cities are managed.

The five groups will work on different aspects of reforms at political level, reforms at administrative level, redefining the role of parastatals, transition systems for rural urban continuum and capacity building at the local level.

Some of the issues that these working committees will deliberate upon are assigning accountability to elected leaders in project execution, direct election of mayor or selection and participatory and inclusive budget-making process involving ward committees.

These working groups have been asked to submit their findings to the ministry in three months, complete with the changes that would be required to be made to municipal laws, recruitment rules, HR policies apart from model frameworks and schemes for cities and states to emulate.

A government order said it was imperative to focus on achieving sustainable and incremental governance reforms that would bring changes in the structure and powers of city governments along with their democratic empowerment and accountability.

The ministry noted that flagship programmes such as Smart City Mission and Swacch Bharat Mission among others mostly focussed primarily on aspect of mapping of delivery of services.

The National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA), the ministry’s think-tank, has been named as the anchor institute for the five groups.

Other than NIUA, the order lists five organisations namely Janaagraha, Indian Institute of Human Settlements, All India Institute of Local Self-Government, CEPT University and Praja Foundation as knowledge partners.