NEW DELHI : Andhra Pradesh and Telangana have tied for first place in the ease of doing business ranking , followed by Gujarat, which topped the chart last year. The process of verifying states’ submissions was concluded by the Department of Industrial Policy and Promotion (DIPP) last week.DIPP maintained real-time rankings of states through an online dashboard that saw stiff competition as the tally kept changing in the past few months. “The ranking reflected currently on the dashboard is final. We will soon come out with a detailed report,” a senior government official said.In its second edition, performance parameters were increased to 340 from 98. The criteria for next year’s rankings are still to be finalised in consultation with the World Bank. The government plans to introduce a feedback mechanism in line with the global report. The experiences of users will be taken into consideration along with proofs provided by the states themselves. In the World Bank’s latest doing business report, India improved by just one spot to 130. The ranking only took into account the business environment in Delhi and Mumbai, which the government feels does not capture the reform agenda being pushed across states. “We have gone beyond World Bank’s agenda to create a business-friendly environment in all states,” said the official cited above.In the latest ranking, Haryana and Uttarakhand are new entrants in the top 10, at six and nine, respectively. Uttarakhand, which at one point had topped the charts, has managed to implement over 96% of reforms against 13% last year. Several states have shown significant improvement over last year’s performance with Bihar completing over 75% of 340 reforms against only 16% last year, moving up fivespots to 16.Delhi has slipped from 15 to 19 this year and Karnataka from 9 to 13. The main areas of reform for states to act upon included environmental registration, commercial dispute resolution, labour regulation, online filing of tax returns and single window clearance. In last year’s assessment it was found that only 32% of the proposed reforms were implemented across the country.The government hopes competition among states will improve the business environment in the country and help India break into the top 100 in the World Bank’s ease of doing business ranking.