PM Modi to announce results of 'Swachh Survekshan 2020' on Thursday

Prime Minister Narendra Modi will announce the results of the fifth edition of the nationwide annual cleanliness survey, 'Swachh Survekshan 2020', on Thursday, the Union Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry has said.

Ministry spokesperson Rajeev Jain said on Tuesday that 18.7 million citizens participated in the survey of 4,242 cities, 62 cantonment boards and 92 towns along the Ganga river.

Jain said that a total of 129 awards will be handed over to the top performing cities and states at the "Swachh Mahotsav" event.

The Union Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry, which is organising the event, said that the prime minister will also interact with select beneficiaries of the Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban (SBM-U) -- 'swachhagrahis' (people adopting cleanliness by building toilet at their homes) and 'safaikarmis' (sanitation workers) -- from different parts of the country through video conference.

The prime minister will launch the 'Swachh Survekshan 2020' results dashboard on the occasion, the ministry said.

It stated that 'Swachh Survekshan 2020', which was completed in 28 days, saw registration of 17 million citizens on Swachhata App, over 11 crore impressions on social media, more than 550,000 sanitary workers linked to social welfare schemes and over 84,000 informal waste-pickers integrated into the mainstream.

Swachh Survekshan was introduced by the government with the objective of generating large-scale citizen participation in the Mission, along with inculcating a spirit of healthy competition among cities towards becoming India's cleanest cities.

Another feature of the event will be the bringing together and felicitation of MoHUA's partner organisations in the SBM-U journey, including United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) and Google, the ministry said.

The cleanliness survey report, along with reports on Swachh Survekshan Innovations and best practices, Swachh Survekshan Social Media Report and Report on Assessment of Ganga Towns, will also be released at the 'Swachh Mahotsav' event, it also said.

While Mysuru had won the award for the cleanest city of India in the first edition of the survey, Indore has retained the top position for three consecutive years (2017,2018, 2019).

The results to be announced on August 20 will bring the curtains down on the much-anticipated results for the 2020 edition which were delayed owing to the Covid-19 pandemic, it added.

MoHUA had conducted Swachh Survekshan 2016 survey for rating 73 major cities in January 2016, followed by Swachh Survekshan 2017 conducted in January-February 2017 for ranking 434 cities.

Swachh Survekshan 2018 ranked 4,203 cities. The 2019 edition not only covered 4,237 cities, but was also the first-of-its-kind completely digital survey completed in a record time of 28 days, it stated.

According to the ministry, in 'Swachh Survekshan 2020', in order to ensure continuous assessment and sustainability of on-ground performance of cities, the government had also introduced Swachh Survekshan League, a quarterly cleanliness assessment of cities and towns conducted across three quarters, with 25 percentage weightage integrated into the final Swachh Survekshan results for this year.