On Thursday, Indore and Surat were crowned joint winners of the cleanest city award, while Maharashtra topped the Union government’s annual cleanliness rankings for metropolitan regions.
Indore was declared the cleanest city for the seventh consecutive year in the Swachh Survekshan Awards. Surat, which had been ranked second after Indore for the previous three years, earned the top prize for the first time.
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According to the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs’ Swachh Survekshan 2023 dashboard, both cities achieved 100% door-to-door garbage collection, 98% source segregation, and 100% dumpsite rehabilitation. Both cities were tied for first position among cities with populations exceeding one lakh.
The rankings take into account rubbish collection from door to door, source segregation, public area cleanliness, clean water bodies, and citizen input on city cleanliness.
In the eight rounds of yearly awards since 2016, this was the first time two cities shared the top prize. Navi Mumbai was ranked as the third cleanest city.
With 89.24% door-to-door collection and 67.76% source segregation, Maharashtra was named the cleanest state. Madhya Pradesh ranks second, with 90.59% door-to-door segregation and 54.1% source segregation.
Safaimitra Surakshit Shehar from Chandigarh received the prize for the city with the best safety standards for sanitation workers. Varanasi has been named the cleanest ‘Ganga town’. Sasvad, Maharashtra, was awarded the cleanest city among cities with a population under one lakh. Mhow Cantonment was ranked the cleanest in the country.
On the other side, Arunachal Pradesh, Mizoram, Rajasthan, Nagaland, and Tripura were classified as the lowest five states.
Beginning with 73 cities in 2016, the number of cities included in the yearly list has grown over time. The 2023 cycle included 4,416 urban municipal entities, 61 cantonments, and 88 Ganga towns. According to the government, the ranking includes 1.58 million online citizen input and 19.82 lakh face-to-face views.
President Droupadi Murmu, who handed out the medals at a ceremony here, emphasized the necessity of turning trash into income. She said that a big portion of metropolitan area was buried by mountains of waste, which had a negative influence on health. She mentioned that the Swachh Bharat Mission is aiming to eradicate such legacy dumpsites.
Hardeep Singh Puri, Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs, stated that scientific trash processing has grown from 15-16% in 2014 to around 76% today. Manoj Joshi, the Housing and Urban Affairs Secretary, stated that cities are trying to reach 100% garbage processing. He stated that there were still cases of sanitation personnel physically cleaning sewers, resulting in accidents and deaths, which must be “completely eliminated”.
Top 10 big cities (over 10 lakh population)
2023
- Indore (same rank in 2022)
- Surat (same rank in 2022)
- Navi Mumbai (same rank in 2022)
- Visakhapatnam (same rank in 2022)
- Bhopal (rank 6 in 2022)
- Vijayawada (rank 5 in 2022)
- Greater Hyderabad (rank 10 in 2022)
- Pune (rank 9 in 2022)
- Raipur (rank 11 in 2022)
- Pimpri Chinchwad (rank 19 in 2022)
