Indore emerged as the cleanest Indian city fourth time in a row in the Swachh Survekshan 2020 conducted by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA). The second and the third position was taken by Surat and Navi Mumbai, respectively.

The ‘best performing States’ category was divided into two parts: States with more than 100 urban local bodies (ULBs) and those with less than 100 ULBs. Chhattisgarh was ranked first in the former category while Jharkhand topped the latter category.

In the ‘cleanest cantonment’ category, Jalandhar Cantt bagged the top spot followed by Delhi Cantt.

In the ‘cleanest Ganga town’ category — that was introduced last year — Varanasi was ranked first.

Ahmedabad took the top spot in the ‘cleanest mega city’ — that has a population of more than 40 lakh — in the fifth edition of the annual cleanliness survey.

Uttar Pradesh’s Shahjahanpur was awarded the first place in ‘maximum citizens participation’ among the cities that has a population over one lakh. On the other hand, Nandprayag in Uttarakhand was ranked first in the less than one lakh population category.

Star cities

Indore, Ambikapur, Navi Mumbai, Surat, Rajkot and Mysuru were rated as five star cities, 86 cities as three star and 64 cities as one star.

“More than five years ago, the Prime Minister had seen a dream — the dream of a Swachh Bharat. Today, we feel immensely proud, as well as humbled, to see how every citizen of urban India has come together to make that dream a tangible reality. In the last five years, we have seen how this Mission has created a deep impact on people’s health, livelihoods, quality of life and, most importantly, in their thoughts and their behaviour,” said Hardeep Puri, Minister of State (Independent Charge) for Housing and Urban Affairs.

Last month, MoHUA launched the sixth edition of the survey, Swachh Survekshan 2021 that saw the introduction of a new performance category, the Prerak DAUUR Samman. It has a total of five additional sub-categories — Divya (Platinum), Anupam (Gold), Ujjwal (Silver), Udit (Bronze), Aarohi (Aspiring). In addition to the present criteria of evaluating cities on ‘population category’, this new category will categorise cities based on six select performance criteria.

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