Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu announced the results of Swachh Survekshan on Monday by releasing a list of 73 top cleanest cities of the country. Mysuru maintained the top position for the second consecutive year, while Chandigarh was ranked second.
Other cities under the top 10 list are Tiruchirappalli in Tamil Nadu, New Delhi Municipal Council in the National Capital Territory of Delhi, Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, Surat and Rajkot in Gujarat, Gangtok in Sikkim, Pimpri Chindwad and Greater Mumbai in Maharashtra.
The 10 least cleanest cities in the list were Varanasi, Dhanbad, Asansol, Patna, Meerut, Raipur, Ghaziabad, Jamshedpur, Kalyan Dombivilli and Itanagar, Hindustan Times reports.
The survey was conducted under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pet project Swachh Bharat mission, launched on Oct. 2, 2014 — Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary. The mission was aimed to make India clean by October 2019, when India will celebrate Gandhi's 150th birth anniversary.
A total of 75 cities were selected for the 2016 ranking, but Noida and Kolkata opted out of the competition as it was not prepared, Live Mint reports.
The urban development ministry's Quality Council of India conducted Swachh Survekshan to access sanitation facilities. The survey also takes into consideration citizens' feedback.
Sanitation and hygiene in the selected cities were measured on the basis of:
- How cities proposed to stop open defecation and integrate solid waste management systems
- Communication strategies on information, education and behaviour change
- Systems adopted for sweeping, door-to-door collection and transportation of waste
- Efficiency in processing and disposal of waste
- Deployment of public and community toilets
- Progress in construction of individual household toilets, according to IANS.
At least 110 people accessed over 50 locations, including bus stands, railway stations, planned and unplanned colonies, community toilets, religious places and market areas, in the 73 cities, quality council chairman Adil Zainulbhai said.
| Rank-wise list of cities (Credit: PIB) | ||||
| 11 Pune | 24 Bhubaneswar | 37 Gurgaon | 50 Guwahati | 63 Jabalpur |
| 12 Navi Mumabi | 25 Indore | 38 Bengaluru | 51 Faridabad | 64 Kalyan Dombivili (Maharashtra) |
| 13 Vadodara | 26 Madurai | 39 South Muncipal Corporation of Delhi | 52 East MCD | 65 Varanasi |
| 14.Ahmedabad | 27 Shimla | 40 Thiruvananthapuram | 53 Shillong | 66 Jamshedpur |
| 15 Imphal | 28 Lucknow | 41 Aizawl | 54 Hubbali-Dharwad (Karnataka) | 67 Ghaziabad |
| 16 Panaji | 29 Jaipur | 42 Gandhinagar | 55 Kochi | 68 Raipur |
| 17 Thane | 30 Gwalior | 43 North MCD | 56 Aurangabad | 69 Meerut |
| 18.Coimbatore | 31 Nashik | 44 Kozhikode | 57 Jodhpur | 70 Patna |
| 19 Hyderabad | 32 Warangal | 45 Kanpur | 58 Kota | 71 Itanagar |
| 20 Nagpur | 33 Agartala | 46 Durg | 59 Cuttack | 72 Asansol |
| 21 Bhopal | 34 Ludhiana | 47 Agra | 60 Kohima | 73 Dhanbad |
| 22 Allahabad | 35 Vasai-Virar | 48 Srinagar | 61 Dehradun | |
| 23 Vijayawada | 36 Chennai | 49 Amritsar | 62 Ranchi | |
