For the fourth year in a row, Indore has been ranked the cleanest city in the country, according to a Swachh Survekshan 2020 report released by the Union Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry on Thursday.
Also read: ‘Visakhapatnam 9th cleanest city in India’
The survey of sanitation in over 4,000 cities was carried out earlier this year over 28 days.
The Ministry released the findings through a virtual event that was supposed to be attended by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, but he could not make it.
World’s largest sanitation survey
Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Puri said Swachh Survekshan, in its fifth edition, had become the world’s largest sanitation survey, with 1.8 crore citizens giving their feedback.
Also read: ‘Mysuru cleanest among the medium-sized cities’
Among the cities with over 1 lakh population, Indore was ranked number one, followed by Surat, Navi Mumbai, Ambikapur, Mysore, Vijayawada, Ahmedabad, New Delhi, Chandrapur and Khargone. Among smaller cities, with population under 1 lakh, the top three cities – Karad, Sasvad and Lonavala – were all from Maharashtra.
Chhattisgarh was ranked the cleanest State out of those with over 100 cities, while Jharkhand was the cleanest among those with less than 100 urban local bodies (ULBs) or cities. In the category of “Ganga towns”, Varanasi, which is Mr. Modi’s Lok Sabha constituency, was ranked the cleanest. Jalandhar got the top rank among cantonments and New Delhi was the cleanest capital city.
Speaking about the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM)- Urban, Mr. Puri said it had had a deep impact on health, livelihoods, quality of life and behaviour, which had come in handy when dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. When the mission was launched in 2014, waste processing was 18%. Now it had increased to 66%.
Earlier in the event, Housing and Urban Affairs Secretary Durga Shanker Mishra said Swachh Survekshan, which began with a survey of 73 cities in 2016, had grown to cover 4,242 cities, 62 cantonment boards and 97 “Ganga towns” in 2020. Survey teams visited 58,000 residential and 20,000 commercial areas in 28 days, while 1.87 crore citizens’ feedbacks were received.
“SBM 2.0”
Mr. Mishra told media later in the day that the Ministry was actively working on coming up with a second phase of the SBM-Urban, which was initially supposed to be till March 2020 but was extended till March 2021.
He said “SBM 2.0” should be finalised before the end of the current phase. The goal of the second phase would be take targets further, than making cities open defecation-free, to also include 100% sludge management and zero dumping of waste in the open.
