• A study by the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE), a non-profit public interest research and advocacy group based in New Delhi, did a reality check of cities that secured the top 50 ranks in 2019. It found that the ranking system was skewed towards cities that had only recently adopted various cleanliness measures.
• Swachh Survekshan 2019 has rewarded cities that implemented a cleanliness drive during the two to three months of the survey. Many cities that work all year towards household-level segregation, decentralised recycling and reuse of waste were given poor rankings.

Swachh Survekshan:

• Swachh Survekshan is a ranking exercise taken up by the Government of India to assess rural and urban areas for their levels of cleanliness and active implementation of Swachhata mission initiatives in a timely and innovative manner.
• The objective of the survey is to encourage large scale citizen participation and create awareness amongst all sections of society about the importance of working together towards making towns and cities a better place to live in. Additionally, the survey also intends to foster a spirit of healthy competition among towns and cities to improve their service delivery to citizens, towards creating cleaner cities and towns.
• The Ministry of Urban Development, Government of India takes up the Swachh Survekshan in urban areas and the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation in rural areas. The Quality Council of India (QCI) has been commissioned the responsibility of carrying out the assessment.

Swachh Survekshan 2019

Swachh Survekshan 2019 covered 4,237 cities in a record time of 28 days, in a completely paperless, digital format for data collection.

Moreover, in this short span of time, assessors managed to visit nearly 73,000 wards, 21,000 commercial areas, 69,000 residential areas, 75,000 community/public toilets, and more than 3100 waste to compost plants across the country.
Indore has been awarded the cleanest city in the country in the Swachh Survekshan 2019 (SS 2019) awards while Bhopal has been declared as the cleanest capital. Ujjain has bagged the award for being the cleanest city in the population category of 3 lakh to 10 lakh.

The top 20 cities in 2019 survey who have been the forerunners in Urban India’s progress towards swachhata – from large cities such as Indore, Mysuru, Ahmedabad, Navi Mumbai, Tirupati, Rajkot, Vijayawada, Ghaziabad, Surat, to smaller towns and cities such as Mul, Ambikapur, Ujjain, NDMC, Karhad, Lonavala, Vita, Dewas, Bhilai, Shahganj, and Panhala.

Ambikapur in Chattisgarh got the second prize overall and has become a role model for other towns in the state. Chhattisgarh has also emerged India’s top performer among states, followed by Jharkhand and Maharashtra.