Indore adjudged cleanest city for 6th time in a row; MP best performing state

New Delhi: Indore was adjudged India's cleanest city for the sixth time in a row, while Surat and Navi Mumbai followed it on the next two spots in the Central government's annual cleanliness survey, which also declared Madhya Pradesh as the best performing state.

In the 'Swachh Survekshan Awards 2022', announced on Saturday, Madhya Pradesh is followed by Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra respectively in the category of best performing states. Chhattisgarh was ranked first last year.

In the state category with fewer 100 urban local bodies, Tripura has been ranked first followed by Jharkhand and Uttarakhand.

While Indore and Surat retained their top positions among cities, Vijaywada lost its third spot to Navi Mumbai.

The 10 top-ranked cities with a population of more than one lakh are: Indore, Surat, Navi Mumbai, GVM Visakhapatnam, Vijaywada, Bhopal, Tirupati, Mysore, New Delhi and Ambikapur.

Agra was at the bottom in the list of 100 cities in this segment. Madhya Pradesh's Gadarwara was at the bottom in the category of cities with less than one lakh population.

President Droupadi Murmu on Saturday gave away the awards to the winners at an event here also attended by Union Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri and others.

In the category of cities having a population of less than one lakh, Maharashtra's Panchgani was ranked number one, followed by Chhattisgarh's Patan (Nagar Palika) and Maharashtra's Karhad.

Haridwar was adjudged the cleanest Ganga town in the category of more than 1 lakh population, followed by Varanasi and Rishikesh.

Bijnor was ranked at the top among Ganga towns with fewer than one lakh population. followed by Kannauj and Garhmukhteshwar respectively.

In the survey, Maharashtra's Deolali was adjudged the country's cleanest Cantonment Board, followed by Ahmedabad and Mhow (Madhya Pradesh).

The New Delhi Municipal Council area was ranked first in the "country's cleanest small city" category, having a population between 1 lakh and 3 lakh.

Noida emerged as the country's "best self sustainable medium city" in the category of 3-10 lakh population. Tirupati bagged the first award in the category of ''Safaimitra Surakshit Sahar''.

Chandigarh has secured the first position in the category of "Fastest Mover State/National Capital or UT" while Vijayawada has emerged as the winner in the category of "Cleanest State/National Capital or UT".

The seventh edition of Swachh Survekshan was conducted to study the progress of the Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban) and rank the Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) based on various cleanliness and sanitation parameters.

The Survekshan has evolved from being an assessment of 73 cities in 2016 to covering 4,354 cities this year, including 91 Ganga towns and 62 contonment zones). The assessment was conducted in three phases -- July-August, September-October and November 2021 to January 2022.

According to the government, 126 ULBs from West Bengal did not participate in the annual cleanliness survey conducted by the Central government.

Over 19 lakh people gave face to face feedback. Nine crore citizen feedback was captured through various sources like Swachhatta app, Vote for your city app and my gov app among others during the survey that was 100 per cent digitised, with complete online submission for all documents by ULBs through a dedicated online portal, officials said.

Vishakhapatnam got the first position as India's "cleanest big city" in the category of 10-40 lakh population.

Meerut has emerged as the "Fastest Mover Big City" with population between 10 lakh and 40 lakh. In the category of "Best City in Maximum Citizen''s Participation" with more than lakh population, Ujjain has been ranked first.

President Murmu congratulated the winners.

Union minister Puri told the event urban India has become open-defecation free with 35 states and Union territories.

"Nearly 600 of our cities have become ‘Safaimitra Surakshit’, with complete mechanisation of sewer and septic tank cleaning operations. 'Manholes' have now become 'machine holes' in these cities. Municipal Solid Waste processing has gone up from 18 per cent in 2014 to 73 per cent today," the minister said.

According to the ministry, the overall marks for ‘Swachh Survekshan- 2022’ assessments, was 7,500.

The survekshan is made up of three components –-- service level progress (3000), certification (2,250) and citizen voice (2,250), the ministry said.