Aafrin Kidwai 
The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) has launched a revised protocol for star rating of cities for handling municipal solid waste. “The new protocol will consider ward-wise geo-mapping, monitoring of SWM value chain through interventions like Swachh Nagar App and zone-wise rating in cities with population of over 50 lakh,” said Durga Shanker Mishra, Secretary, MoHUA, reports IBG News.
The Ministry awarded 5-Star rating to six cities for being ‘garbage-free’ including Navi Mumbai and Surat, and Ambikapur (Chhattisgarh), Rajkot (Gujarat), Mysuru (Karnataka) and Indore (Madhya Pradesh).
While announcing the Swachh Survekshan star-ratings, Hardeep Puri, Minister of State (Independent Charge), MoHUA said, “Five years ago, we introduced Swachh Survekshan (SS), the annual cleanliness survey for urban India. However, since it is a ranking system, several of our cities, despite doing exceptionally well, were not being recognised appropriately.”
The Ministry, therefore, devised the Star Rating Protocol for Garbage Free Cities – a comprehensive framework where each ward in every city must achieve a certain standard across 24 different components of solid waste management (SWM) and is graded based on overall marks received, he added. Apart from 5-star rating, 65 cities got 3-Stars and 70 cities 1-Star rating.
