Swachh rankings: Mysuru, Vizag, Surat among India's cleanest cities

New Delhi: Mysuru has been ranked first in terms of cleanliness again after 2014, followed by Chandigarh, Tiruchirappalli and NDMC area of the national capital, according to a QCI survey.

The rankings of the Swachh Survekshan Survey, conducted by Quality Council of India, were announced by Urban Development Minister Venkaiah Naidu on Monday.

Visakhapatnam, Surat, Rajkot, Gangtok, Pimpri-Chindwad (Maharashtra) were also among the top ten clean cities.

The least clean cities included Dhanbad, Asansol Itanagar, Patna, Meerut, Raipur, Ghaziabad, Jamshedpur, Varanasi and Kalyan Dombivili.

As part of 'Swachh Bharat Mission', the survey was commissioned across 73 cities, including 51 cities that have a population of over 10 lakh each and 22 capital cities that do not have that much population.

Naidu said cities from South and West continue to do well overall but those in other parts of the country, particularly, in the North are beginning to catch up with the traditional leaders.

"This is meant to help the cities know where they stand in absolute terms and in relation to others besides what more needs to be done by each city to ensure sanitation. In that sense, the survey is more holistic, participatory, purposeful and meaningful for future guidance and evolving course of action," he said.

Naidu said the results of the survey were analysed to identify the top leaders, aspiring leaders, cities where accelerated efforts need to be made and the slow movers.

Last cleanliness survey was conducted in 2014 among 476 cities with a population of one lakh and above and its results were announced last year.

This was before the launch of 'Swachh Bharat Mission' by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in October last. "Swacch Survekshan-2016 is primarily intended to measure the impact of the efforts under Swachh Bharat Mission launched after the survey of 2014," Naidu said.

Based on the comparison of the marks and ranks of the two surveys, Naidu said 'Swachh Bharat Mission' has made a positive impact in urban areas in terms of sanitation, attitudes of urban local bodies and citizens.

The top 10 cities in terms of sanitation and hygiene in order of rank are: Mysuru, Chandigarh, Tiruchirapalli (Tamil Nadu), New Delhi Municipal Council, Visakhapatnam (Andhra Pradesh), Surat, Rajkot, both in Gujarat, Gangtok (Sikkim), Pimpri Chindwad and Greater Mumbai, both from Maharashtra.

The bottom 10 cities are: Kalyan Dombivili (ranked 64), Varanasi, Jamshedpur, Ghaziabad , Raipur, Meerut, Patna, Itanagar, Asansol and Dhanbad.

Naidu stated that of the 73 cities surveyed, 32 have improved ranks since the last survey including 17 from the North, 6 from the West, 5 from the South and 2 each from the East and North-East.

Of these 32, top 10 movers who have substantially improved their ranks in 2016 survey are: Allahabad (improved by 45 ranks), Nagpur (40), Visakhapatnam (39), Gwalior (34), Bhubaneswar (32), Hyderabad (31), Gurgaon (29), Vijayawada (23) and Lucknow (23).

Among the municipal bodies in the NCT of Delhi, New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) improved its rank from 7 in 2014 to 4 in 2016, South MCD from 47 to 39 and North MCD from 47 to 43, while East MCD slipped from 47 rank in 2014 to 52 in 2016.

Top 10 cities which moved down in ranks in 2016 (top 10 bottom movers) are: Jamshedpur, Kochi, Shillong, Chennai, Guwahati, Asansol, Bengaluru, Ranchi, Kalyan Dombivili and Nashik. While Jamshedpur moved down this year by 53 ranks, Nashik slipped by 23 ranks.

A total of 33 cities have slipped in terms of ranks in 2016 from that of previous survey.

These include 11 of the 28 cities included in the survey from the North, 8 of 15 cities from the South, 7 of 15 from the West, 5 of 7 from the East and 2 of 8 from the North-East.

Regarding methodology used for Swachh Survekshan-2016, Naidu said that out of the total marks of 2,000 for assessing the performance of 73 cities, 60 per cent were assigned for solid waste management related parameters, 30 per cent for construction of toilets and 5 per cent each for city level sanitation strategy and behaviour change communication.

Quality Council of India, which conducted the survey, deployed 25 teams of 3 trained surveyors each to visit 42 locations in each city covering major zones like railway stations, bus stations, religious places, major market places, planned and unplanned residential areas including slums and toilet complexes.

The survey teams took a total of 3,066 geo-tagged photos of places visited as evidence and they were uploaded on website today.

Naidu said that all the 73 cities were informed sufficiently in advance so as to make available documentary evidence of their efforts towards improving sanitation and for verification by survey teams.

Over one lakh citizens responded with their feedback on cleanliness in respective cities making the survey of 2016 evidence-based and participatory, he said. The minister also felicitated the 15 well performing cities.