Indore ranked India's cleanest city, Uttar Pradesh's Gonda dirtiest

NEW DELHI: Indore is India’s cleanest city. The Swachh Survekshan 2017 has found cities hailing from BJP-ruled states of Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat and Chhattisgarh as the best performing in the annual survey conducted in 434 cities and towns.

The first two spots in the cleanliness survey have gone to Madhya Pradesh cities. While Indore was found the cleanest, Bhopal has claimed the second spot. The other cities in top 10 include Visakhapatnam, Surat, Mysuru, Tiruchirapally, New Delhi Municipal Council, Navi Mumbai, Vadodara and Chandigarh. Towns at the bottom of the ranking of 434 surveyed are Gonda (UP) ranked 434 followed by Bhusawal (Maharashtra), Bagaha (Bihar) ranked 433, Hardoi (UP) ranked 432, Katihar (Bihar) at 431.
Announcing the survey results at a press conference on Thursday, urban development minister M Venkaiah Naidu described Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Jharkhand and Chattisgarh followed by Andhra Pradesh and Telangana as the “movers and shakers” for having significantly improved their rankings from that of the survey conducted in 2014 before the launch of Swachh Bharat Mission in October, 2014.

Swachh Survekshan conducted in 2016 covered 73 cities with over million population each besides capital cities.

The minister said in Swachh Surekshan-2017, all the cities surveyed in Madhya Pradesh and Jharkhand have substantially improved their rankings over that of 2016 and 2014. Gujarat did so in respect of all cities excepting Rajkot. That is also the case of Chattisgarh except Bilaspur.

In Telangana, only two cities dropped in rankings this year, while in Andhra Pradesh four cities dropped in the rankings. Uttar Pradesh has the most number of twons – about 25 – among the bottom 50 cities , followed by Rajasthan and Punjab with five each, two in Maharashtra and one each from Haryana, Karnataka and Lashadweep.

The Prime Minister’s constituency, Varanasi, has improved its rank from 418 in 2014 to 32 this year to become the fastest big city mover in the North Zone. The minister said UP, Bihar, Rajasthan, Punjab and Kerala need to substantially step up efforts to improve sanit ation standards in urban areas.
As first reported by ET on May 2, the citizen survey has revealed that a majority of the people – about 83% -- have lauded the Swachh Bharat mission saying they find their cities cleaner now.

In a total score of 2,000, 900 marks were assigned for a city's performance in ending open defecation and on solid waste management, 600 marks for citizen feedback and 500 marks for independent observations.