Indore cleanest city, Jharkhand emerges best-performing state

Jharkhand has emerged as the best-performing state in terms of cleanliness, while Indore in Madhya Pradesh was adjudged the cleanest city in the country, according to the government cleanliness survey released on Wednesday.

Maharashtra stood at the second place in the ‘Swachh Survekshan 2018,’ while Chhattisgarh was at the third position in 'best-performing states' survey released by Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said.

In cities, table-topper Indore is followed by Madhya Pradesh capital Bhopal, while Union Territory of Chandigarh stands at the third place in the national-level category.

Indore and Bhopal have retained their respective positions from the last year survey. But this year, the survey has covered 4,203 cities while in 2017 only 434 cities were surveyed.

State ranking was introduced in this year's survey, which was conducted between January 4 and March 10.

In 2016, the survey was conducted in 73 cities having a population of 1 million or more and also the capital cities. Mysuru had bagged the award of the cleanest city.

The names of the "worst-performing cities" in the latest survey would be announced on the day the awards are presented to the winners, Puri said. The New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) got the tag of India's ‘cleanest small city' (urban local body) with population between 0.1 million and 0.3 million in the 2018 survey. In the 'cantonment' category, the Delhi Cantt has emerged as the cleanest, followed by Almora, Ranikhet and Nainital (all three in Uttarakhand).

Uttar Pradesh's Ghaziabad was adjudged the "fastest mover big city" in this survey. Ghaziabad improved its cleanliness ranking from 351 to 36 in the category of more than 1 million population, Puri said, adding, “It shows the government of Uttar Pradesh is making all efforts to improve the cleanliness status in the state.” Greater Mumbai in Maharashtra was the cleanest state capital, according to the survey.

In the category of cities with less than 0.1 million population, the cleanest city was Bhadson (Punjab) in the north zone, Bundu (Jharkhand) in the east zone, Kakching (Manipur) in the north east zone, Siddipet (Telangana) in the south zone, and Panchgani (Maharashtra) in the west zone.

Puri said a record number of 3.7 million citizens' feedback was received for this year's survey.

Compared to the previous surveys, this year's exercise allocated higher weightage to the feedback from citizens and direct observation by assessors on the performance parameters of the cities on cleanliness, Puri said.

Marks were awarded based on various parameters, including open-defecation free status, and collection, transportation, processing and disposal of waste.

While deciding the awards, it has been kept in mind that one city gets only one award -- the category in which it has performed the best, Puri said.