Indore again tops Swachh rankings, Surat joint first

Indore and Surat were jointly declared the cleanest cities in India in the Swachh Survekshan Awards-2023, presented by President Droupadi Murmu at the Bharat Mandapam on Thursday. This was the seventh time in a row that Indore won the accolade and the first that Surat got the pole position, although shared.

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Navi Mumbai, which came third in last year's competition, retained its position On the other end of the spectrum, three of the lowest-ranked cities in the million-plus population category were in West Bengal: Haora (Howrah) at the bottom, with Asansol and Kolkata following closely as the worst-performing cities on the cleanliness indicators. Faridabad, in Haryana, and Madurai, Tamil Nadu, were the fourth- and fifth-worst cities on the list.

The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) was ranked 90th out of 446 cities (in the above 100,000 population category), and the New Delhi Municipal Council area secured the seventh spot (the NDMC area was ranked third in the capital cities list).

The Swachh Survekshan survey is at the centre of the Union government's Swachh Bharat mission, which was launched as one of the big-ticket initiatives by Narendra Modi government in its first few years in power. For the eighth edition of the survey, 3,000 assessors fanned out across 4,500 cities (of these, 3,970 have a population of fewer than 100,000 people) to record a city's performance on 46 parameters, including waste collection, inclusive toilets and improved plastic waste management.