Aafrin Kidwai 
President Droupadi Murmu felicitated the awardees of the cleanest States and cities at the award ceremony of Azadi@75 Swachh Survekshan 2022, hosted as part of Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban 2.0 by Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs (MoHUA) at Talkatora Stadium, New Delhi on Saturday.
The award ceremony, organized to recognize the good work done for Swachhata by towns/ cities, States and Union Territories under Swachh Survekshan 2022 and certifications for Garbage Free Star rating for cities – saw more than 160 awards under various categories being given away through the day.
The President formally released the Swachh Survekshan 2022 dashboard and gave away the top 12 awards. In an impressive display of sustainability and good governance, Indore, the city of lakes and palaces, walked away with the Cleanest City title for the sixth consecutive year, in the ‘more than 1 lakh population’ category, while Surat was adjudged the second cleanest city, for the second time in a row. Navi Mumbai bagged the third spot. In the population category of ‘less than 1 lakh’, Panchgani and Karad from Maharashtra bagged the first and third positions respectively, while Patan from Chhattisgarh bagged the second position. Tirupati received the best city award in Safai Mitra Suraksha while Haridwar in Uttarakhand received the award for the best Ganga town in more than one lakh population cities. Shivamoggain Karnataka received the fast mover city award.
Indore further cemented its position by emerging as India’s first 7-star Garbage Free city, while Surat, Bhopal, Mysuru, Navi Mumbai, Vishakhapatnam, andTirupati earned 5-star Garbage Free certifications.
The State awards saw a few surprises. Madhya Pradesh emerged as the ‘Cleanest State’ in the category of “more than 100 Urban Local Bodies”, relegating Chhattisgarh, the Cleanest State of the previous 3 years, to second place. Maharashtra emerged as third cleanest State. Similarly, Tripura emerged as the Cleanest Stateaward in the “less than 100 ULBs category”, dislodging Jharkhand, which had won in the last 2 consecutive years. Jharkhand and Uttarakhand received the second and third spots respectively.
This year’s Survekshan participated by 4,355 cities, also saw an unprecedented number of citizens’ feedback – over 9 crores, compared to 5 cores last year. In all, 22 States and 5 UTs received awards, of whom 8 States received more than 10 awards each. 8 States and 5 UTs have shown improvements ranging between 5 – 25% in their overall ground level performance over last year. Of them, 4 out the 8 North Eastern states have shown significant improvement in the overall performance over the last year. Moreover, 10 Cantonment Boards (against 7 CBs last year) and 2 Ganga towns received awards. A heartening feature of the awards was that smaller cities with population of less than 25,000 have performed admirably in the survey, with 40 of them receiving awards today.
The vision of a Garbage Free India under SBM-U 2.0 was given further impetus by announcing the results of 7-star and 5-star rated cities under the Star Rating Protocol of Garbage Free Cities. The revised Star Rating Protocol of Garbage Free Cities was launched in 2021 to holistically evaluate cities across solid waste management parameters. This year, the number has gone up manifold with 3,600 cities applying for the assessment against 2,238 last year, and number of Star rated cities has gone up to 412 (with 11 five-star cities, 182 three-star cities, and 218 one-star cities), thus signifying how cities’ aspirations towards becoming Garbage Free is getting enhanced.
Mr Hardeep S Puri, Union Minister of Housing & Urban Affairs appealed to all citizens to begin a 3-week focused campaign of source segregation from 2nd Oct, on the occasion of Swachhata Divas,
