The ‘Swachhta Sarvekshan’ study carried out by the Urban Development Ministry has ranked Mysuru in Karnataka as the cleanest Indian city. This is the second year in a row that Mysuru has earned this distinction. Chandigarh, Tiruchirapalli, the New Delhi Municipal Council and Visakhapatnam are the other cities that have made it to the top five cleanest cities. A total of 73 cities were surveyed for cleanliness and have been categorised based on the marks scored by each of them in the ‘Swachh Survekshan-2016’ survey, results of which were announced by the Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu.
According to the Urban Development Ministry, 15 cities who scored more than 70 per cent of the total marks of 2000 were categorised as ‘Leaders’; 20 cities with scores in the range of 60-70 per cent are ‘Aspiring Leaders’; those with scores in the range of 50-60 per cent are the cities which need to accelerate their efforts and cities who scored below 50 per cent have been dubbed ‘Slow Movers’, who need to work harder to improve their sanitation.
These are the cities (‘Leaders’) that came within the top 15:
1. Mysuru
2. Chandigarh
3. Tiruchirapalli
4. New Delhi Municipal council
5. Visakhapatnam
6. Surat
7. Rajkot
8. Gangtok
9. Pimpri Chinchwad
10. Greater Mumbai
11. Pune
12. Navi Mumbai
13. Vadodara
14. Ahmedabad
15. Imphal
The Prime Minister’s constituency has not made it to the top cities; it ranked 65 out of the list of 73 cities because of poor sanitation facilities.
In an average, cities from the western and southern part of India did better than their counterparts from northern and eastern India.
Following are the cities that made up the rest of the ranking:
Aspiring Leaders:
16. Panaji
17. Thane
18. Coimbatore
19. Hyderabad
20. Nagpur
21. Bhopal
22. Allahabad
23. Vijayawada
24. Bhubaneswar
25. Indore
26. Madurai
27. Shimla
28. Lucknow
29. Jaipur
30. Gwalior
31. Nashik
32. Warangal
33. Agartala
34. Ludhiana
35. Vasai-Virar
Acceleration required:
36. Chennai
37. Gurgaon
38. Bengaluru
39. South Municipal Corporation of Delhi
40. Thiruvananthapuram
41. Aizawl
42. Gandhinagar
43. North MCD
44. Kozhikode
45. Kanpur
46. Durg
47. Agra
48. Srinagar
49. Amritsar
50. Guwahati
51. Faridabad
52. East MCD
53. Shillong
Slow Movers:
54. Hubbali-Dharwad (Karnataka)
55. Kochi
56. Aurangabad
57. Jodhpur
58. Kota
59. Cuttack
60. Kohima
61. Dehradun
62. Ranchi
63. Jabalpur
64. Kalyan Dombivili (Maharashtra)
65. Varanasi
66. Jamshedpur
67. Ghaziabad
68. Raipur
69. Meerut
70. Patna
71. Itanagar
72. Asansol
73. Dhanbad.
Among other parameters, sanitation and hygiene in the selected cities were measured on the basis of how cities proposed to stop open defecation and integrate solid waste management systems; communication strategies adopted for information, education and behavioural change; efficiency in processing and disposal of waste and deployment of public and community toilets.
