Indore cleanest city of India – fifth year in a row!

President Shri Ram Nath Kovind honoured the awardees of Swachh Survekshan (SS) 2021 at the ‘Swachh Amrit Mahotsav’ organised by the Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs (MoHUA) at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi on Saturday.

The award ceremony, organized to recognize the good work done for Swachhata by towns/ cities, States and Union Territories under various initiatives of the Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban), viz. Swachh Survekshan 2021, Safaimitra Suraksha Challenge, and certifications for Garbage Free Star rating for cities – saw more than 300 awards under various categories being given away through the day.

Indore won the award for the cleanest city as well as the Safaimitra Suraksha Challenge’ for being dust-bin free, litter-free, and promoting six-bin waste segregation. Navi Mumbai was ranked second on the Safaimitra Suraksha Challenge

Surat won the award for the second cleanest in India. 

Vijayawada was declared as the third cleanest city.

Maharashtra state swept the Awards for the cleanest city with less than one lakh population, with Vita at number 1, followed by Lonavala in second position and Saswad at number third.

In the category of ‘Fastest Mover’, Hoshangabad (Madhya Pradesh) emerged as the ‘Fastest Mover City’ (in the ‘more than 1 lakh population’ category) with a jump of 274 ranks from 361^st position in the 2020 rankings to the 87^thposition this year, thus securing a place among the top 100 cities.

 Karnataka and Mizoram became the ‘Fastest Mover States’ in the big (more than 100 ULBs) and small (less than 100 ULBs) state category respectively.

Here are the other winners in different categories:

Cleanest Cantonment: Ahmedabad Cant.

Cleanest Ganga City: Varanasi

Best Performing State (More than 100 ULBs): Chattisgarh (winner in this category for the third time in a row)

Best Performing State (Less than 100 ULBs): Jharkhand

Maharashtra has successfully bagged a total of 92 awards, the highest by any State in this year’s Survekshan, followed by Chhattisgarh with 67 awards. Additionally, under the Prerak Daaur Samman, a new performance category introduced under Swachh Survekshan 2021, five cities – Indore, Surat, Navi Mumbai, New Delhi Municipal Council and Tirupati were categorized as ‘Divya’ (Platinum).  This year’s Survekshan, participated by 4,320 cities, also saw an unprecedented number of citizens’ feedback – over 5 crores, compared to 1.87 cores last year. SS 2021 has also helped identify over 6,000 innovations and best practices in sanitation and waste management from across the urban India.

The results of 3-star and 5-star rated cities under the Star Rating Protocol of Garbage Free Cities were also announced. A total of 9 cities – Indore, Surat, New Delhi Municipal Council, Navi Mumbai, Ambikapur, Mysuru, Noida, Vijayawada and Patan- have been certified as 5 star cities while 143 cities have been certified as 3 star. The Star Rating Protocol of Garbage Free Cities was introduced as a SMART framework by MoHUA in 2018, to holistically evaluate cities across solid waste management parameters. In 2018, only 56 cities were awarded certification on some star rating. 

This year, the number has gone up manifold with 2,238 cities applying for the assessment. The mammoth exercise was completed successfully despite the COVID-19 restrictions as is evidenced in the numbers – 1.4 crore photographic evidence collected across 3.5 crore data points, along with 14.19 lakh citizen validation and 1 lakh locations covered during the assessment period.

Congratulating the winning cities, President Kovind said that best practices should be shared among cities to make India cleaner.

“The next few years will be dedicated to holistic cleanliness, clean air, land and water,” Mr Puri said.

Detailed results, reports and releases are available on the Swachh Bharat Mission –Urban: https://www.ss2021.in/#/home

The webcast of the event is available on the Swachh Bharat Urban YouTube Channel.