Quarterly cleanliness assessment of cities and towns

Asserting that Swachh Bharat is the fulcrum on which all the central schemes rest, Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri on Thursday launched the Swachh Sarvekshan League 2020. He said that there will be a quarterly cleanliness assessment of cities and towns in India.

This will be integrated with Swachh Survekshan 2020, the fifth edition of the annual cleanliness survey of urban India to be conducted from January to February 2010. He added that the Swachh Bharat Mission, which was launched amid cynicism in 2014 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, has become a 'jan aandolan' in real sense.

Elaborating on the unique features of the league, Puri said that the new format makes the process more comprehensive an interactive. "It is citizen-centred and makes them a stakeholder," he said.

The league has been launched with the aim of sustaining the on-ground performance of cities along with continuous monitoring of service level performance in cleanliness. It will be conducted in three quarters April- June, July-September and October-December 2019.

"It will have a weightage of 2000 marks for each quarter, which will be evaluated on the basis of monthly updation of Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban) by the cities. Along with this, outbound calls will be made to the citizens to validate the claims made by the cities on 12 service level progress indicators. These two parameters will determine the quarterly ranking of cities.

The ranks will be assigned in two categories -- cities with population of one lakh and above and those with population of less than 1 lakh. The exercise will cover all ULBs that have come into existence on or before 31 December 2018. "The ranking of the cities will encourage healthy competition between the cities," he said.

"The high performance of the Indian cities in Swachh Survekshan League 2020 will be crucial, as it will impact their ranking in Swachh Survekshan 2020, as 25 percent weightage of the quarterly assessment will be included in the annual survey in January 2020," the department said in a statement.

--IANS

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