Indore adjudged cleanest city in India for record 7th time in a row

Bhopal: Indore in Madhya Pradesh has been adjudged the cleanest city in India, seventh time in a row, in the latest annual ‘Swachh Suvekshan’ results, declared on Thursday.

The city, this time, shared the honour with Surat in Gujarat.

The centre’s annual cleanliness survey report for 2023 was released by President Draupadi Murmu in Delhi.

“Indore has bagged the cleanest city award for the seventh time. This award is dedicated to Lord Ram and it was made possible because of the untiring efforts of people of Indore, workers, officials, (Madhya Pradesh) MP CM Mohan Yadav, minister Kailash Vijayvargiya. I congratulate everyone. Indore has now become a global model now”, Indore Municipal Corporation (IMC) mayor Pushyamitra Bhargav said in his ‘X’ post.

The city’s effective, sustainable, and durable waste management system has played a key role in achieving the feat, IMC officials said.

The survey was based on the theme ‘Waste to Wealth’ and witnessed tough competition in different categories among more than 4,400 cities.

Indore, known as the financial capital of Madhya Pradesh, has secured 4,709.40 marks out of 4,800 under ‘Service Level Progress’ for segregated collection, processing and disposal of different types of waste, IMC consultant for the ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’, Amit Dubey said.

“A sustainable system of garbage collection, processing and disposal has been developed in Indore. The city’s consecutive success in the National Cleanliness Survey is based on this strong foundation”, he said.

According to him, the waste yield in the city has declined sharply over a period of time following a complete ban on single-use plastic in Indore.

The ‘3 R’ (reduce, reuse and recycle) centres, cloth bags and utensil ‘banks’ and parks have been developed using reusable things out of waste materials and home composting units  have also helped in the reduction of waste in the city.

According to the IMC officials, the waste from 4.65 lakh households and 70,543 commercial establishments is systematically sorted at the primary source and processed and disposed of at different plants in the city.

Nearly 692 tons of wet waste, 683 tons of dry wastes and 179 tons of plastic wastes are collected everyday in the city under different categories.

The IMC has deployed 850 specially-designed vehicles for the purpose.

A ‘Gobar-Dhan’ plant has been established in the city to generate bio-CNG by processing wet waste.

The bio-CNG produced in the plant runs 110 city buses.