Modi teri Varanasi maili

Mysuru tops Swachh rankings

New Delhi: Mysuru has retained its position as the cleanest city, while Dhanbad in Jharkhand has been ranked the worst. These are findings of the first-ever cleanliness ranking of cities since Swachh Bharat Mission was launched in October 2014.

Prime Minister's Varanasi constituency, however, is one of the 10 dirtiest cities under his pet cleanliness initiative. Cities in the top 10 club include Chandigarh, Tiruchir apalli, New Delhi MC, Visakhapatnam, Surat, Rajkot, Gangtok and Greater Mumbai while the worst 10 include Ghaziabad, Meerut, Patna and Kalyan-Dombivili.

Results are based on the marks scored in respects of the main components of Swachh Bharat Mission, availability of infrastructure and service levels related to sanitation such as individual household toilets, public and community toilets and collection, transportation and processing of municipal solid waste.

Swachh Survekshna, as the survey conducted in 73 cities with 10 lakh and above population is being called, has revealed that cities in south and east India have taken better to the Swachh Bharat Mission than cities in north and west India.

The first survey had been conducted in 2014 before the Swachh Bharat Mission was launched in October 2014. Even then the 476-city survey had thrown up Mysuru as the winner. A comparative analysis of the two successive surveys has shown that four cities have improved their ranks to break into top 10 in 2016. These include Visakhapatnam, Surat, Rajkot and Gangtok.

These cities have pushed down Navi Mumbai, Chennai, Pune and Nashik, which had finished in the top 10 in 2014. Dhanbad has been found the dirtiest city by the survey. The 10 dirtiest cities include three cities from Uttar Pradesh - Varanasi, Ghaziabad and Meerut. Interestingly, all three are represented by BJP MPs in Parliament, including Prime Minister Narendra Modi, minister Gen V K Singh and Rajendra Agrawal. Kalyan Dombivilli, Jamshedpur, Raipur, Patna, Itanagar and Asansol are the other cities which have finished at the bottom of the survey.

Releasing the 73-city survey rankings, Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu shifted the blame completely on the local administration. When asked why Prime Minister's own constituency had not fared well in his initiative, Naidu said, "The local administration can best reply to this. If it has fared poorly, then the administration should work towards improvement."

While Mysuru has been the clear winner in both the years, Tiruchirapalli, ranked third in the 2016 survey, has achieved the best behavioural change as per the survey. The study was conducted by Quality Council of India, which deployed 25 teams involving a total of 100 trained surveyors for verification of documents, field observation and obtaining citizen feedback.

The survey was conducted to assess the measures taken by the cities to improve sanitation, present service levels including infrastructure developed and in progress, deployment of men and machines, strategies being followed, efforts to bring about behavioural changes and the overall impact of Swachh Bharat Mission besides promoting a spirit of competition among cities.

Naidu said such surveys would help in increasing awareness about the programme. "It would now be made an annual feature," he said. The minister also announced that by end of this year, 400 cities would be open defecation free.