Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh has improved its rank in “Swachh Survekshan-2016” to break into top 10 clean cities in India.
Mysuru in Karnataka remained the cleanest city in the country while Dhanbad in Jharkhand came at the bottom of 73 major cities surveyed for sanitation scenario last month. Results of ‘Swachh Survekshan-2016’ were released by Uniono Minister for Urban Development M. Venkaiah Naidu at a media conference in New Delhi on Monday. A total of 53 cities with a population of above ten lakhs each and 22 capitals that do not have that much population were selected for the survey. NOIDA and Kolkata desired to participate in the next round of survey.
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.
Visakhapatnam, Surat and Rajkot, both form Gujarat, and Gangtok (Sikkim) improved their ranks to break into top 10 clean cities in this year’s survey.
The bottom 10 cities are: Kalyan Dombivili (Maharshtra-ranked 64), Varanasi, Jamshedpur (Jharkhand), Ghaziabad (UP), Raipur (Chattisgarh), Meerut (UP), Patna (Bihar), Itanagar (Arunachal Pradesh), Asansol (West Bengal) and Dhanbad, ranked 73.
Last cleanliness survey was conducted in 2014 among 476 cities with a population of one lakh and above each and results were announced last year. This survey was done before the launch of Swachh Bharat Mission by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in October last year. From the results of 2014 survey which was based on a large number of parameters, 476 cities were ranked based on their performance with regard to the components of Swachh Bharat Mission like construction of toilets, solid waste management and independent observation. This enabled comparison of results of both the surveys for assessing the impact of Swachh Bharat Mission.
The 73 cities surveyed this year were also ranked based on the marks they scored in 2014 for arriving at their ranks in 2014 for further comparison with the results of this year’s survey. The Union Minister said that the Swachh Survekshan-2016 was thorough, professional, evidence based and participatory.
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. He said this is a clear evidence of enhanced efforts being made by the northern cities towards sanitation and new cities challenging the domination of cities from the South and the West among top clean cities.
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 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 who moved down in ranks in 2016 i.e 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.
While the top movers has 4 cities from the North, there is no city from the North among the top 10 bottom movers.
While making an improvement in the efforts and ground situation towards sanitation, 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 informed that out of the total marks of 2,000 for assessing the performance of efforts of 73 cities, 60% were assigned for solid waste management related parameters, 30% for construction of toilets and 5% each for city level sanitation strategy and behavior 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. (INN)