Indore Ranked Cleanest City In India, Gonda In Uttar Pradesh The Dirtiest

Indore in Madhya Pradesh (MP) is India’s cleanest city and Gonda in Uttar Pradesh (UP) the dirtiest, a nationwide cleanliness survey by the Urban Development Ministry has found.

The survey of 434 cities, conducted as part of the Narendra Modi government’s Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, or Clean India Mission, saw the MP city displace Karnataka’s Mysuru, which has been topping the rankings.

In order to foster a healthy competition between cities for improving cleanliness standards, the Ministry of Urban Development started the Swachh Survekshan survey, ranking of cities on cleanliness and other aspects of urban sanitation in 2016 which ranked 73 cities across the country. On the same lines, the ministry initiated Swachh Survekshan 2017 in which it ranked 500 cities of India.

The performance evaluation of the Swachh Survekshan is conducted by Quality Council of India, an autonomous body established by Government of India in 1997 for quality assurance in all spheres of activities including governance.

The cities are ranked based five evaluation parameters with varying weightages

• Waste collection, sweeping and transportation (40 per cent)
• Municipal solid waste-processing and disposal (20 per cent)
• ODF/toilets (30 per cent)
• Information, education and behaviour change (5 per cent)
• Capacity building-SBM e-Learning portal (5 per cent)

Among other notable things that came out of this survey, the most significant is Varanasi’s improved rank of 32. The city was ranked 418th in 2016. However, four of the dirties cities in the country are from UP. Around 25 towns from UP are ranked among the bottom 50 cities.

Among the cleanest, 12 cities are from Gujarat, 11 from Madhya Pradesh and 8 from Andhra Pradesh. Bhopal, Visakhapatnam, Surat, Mysuru, Tiruchirapally, Navi Mumbai, Vadodara and Chandigarh are among the top 10 clean cities in that order.

As a part of the survey, 38 cities were awarded including the top five clean cities at the national level, cleanest cities and fastest movers  in different zones in 5-10 lakh and 2-5 lakh population categories.