15 February, New Delhi
Mysuru in Karnataka retained the top rank in terms of the cleanest city in the country while Dhanbad in Jharkhand came at the bottom of 73 major cities surveyed for sanitation scenario last month.
Varanasi, the Lok Sabha constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has poor score on the cleanliness count, ranking 65th in a survey conducted by the Quality Council of India.
The survey was carried out to measure the impact of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India campaign) launched by the Prime Minister in 2014.
Announcing results of Swachh Survekshan-2016 of 73 major cities and capitals at a news conference here, Union Urban Development Minister M Venkaiah Naidu said the top 10 cities in terms of sanitation and hygiene in order of rank were: Mysuru, Chandigarh, Tiruchirapalli (Tamil Nadu), New Delhi Municipal Council, Visakhapatnam(Andhra Pradesh), Surat, Rajkot, both in Gujarat, Gangtok (Sikkim), Pimpri Chindwad and Greater Mumbai, both from Maharashtra.
The Minister said 53 cities with a population of above ten lakhs each and 22 capitals that do not have that much population were selected for the survey.
He said NOIDA and Kolkata desired to participate in the next round of survey.
Naidu said Visakhapatnam(Andhra Pradesh),Surat and Rajkot, both form Gujarat and Gangtok(Sikkim) improved their ranks to break into top 10 clean cities in this years survey.
The Minister said bottom 10 cities were Kalyan Dombivili (Maharshtra-ranked 64), Varanasi, Jamshedpur (Jharkhand), Ghaziabad (UP), Raipur (Chattisgarh), Meerut (UP), Patna (Bihar), Itanagar (Arunachal Pradesh), Asansol (West Bengal) and Dhanbad, ranked 73.
He said Swachh Survekshan-2016 is primarily intended to measure the impact of the efforts under Swachh Bharat Mission launched after the cleanliness survey of 2014 besides ranking the 73 cities based on strategic efforts for infrastructure creation relating to toilets, solid waste management, present level of service delivery and behaviour change communication. The Minister said the survey results including ranks are announced to further promote a healthy spirit of competition among the cities.
He said last cleanliness survey was conducted in 2014 among 476 cities with a population of one lakh and above each and results were announced last year. The Minister said this survey was done before the launch of Swachh Bharat Mission by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in October last year. ”From the results of 2014 survey which was based on a large number of parameters, 476 cities were ranked based on their performance with regard to the components of Swachh Bharat Mission like construction of toilets, solid waste management and independent observation. This enabled comparison of results of both the surveys for assessing the impact of Swachh Bharat Mission,” he said. The Minister said the 73 cities surveyed this year were also ranked based on the marks they scored in 2014 for arriving at their ranks in 2014 for further comparison with the results of this years survey.
Swachh Bharat Mission launched in 2014 has three major components namely solid waste management, construction of individual household and public and community toilets and behaviour change communication. He said out of the estimated total project cost of Rs 62, 0009 crore over the five year period till 2019, Rs 38,000 crore is earmarked for solid waste management which comes to about 60 per cent. In the methodology used for this year’s survey, broadly weightages have been accordingly given for different components of the mission adding up to a total of 2,000 marks, Naidu said.
The Minister said out of this total marks, 1000 marks are for service level status, 500 each for independent observation and citizen feedback about sanitation scenario in respective cities. Regarding methodology used for Swachh Survekshan-2016, Naidu informed that out of the total marks of 2,000 for assessing the performance of efforts of 73 cities, 60 per cent were assigned for solid waste management related parameters, 30 per cent for construction of toilets and 5 per cent each for city level sanitation strategy and behavior change communication.
Naidu said Quality Council of India which conducted the survey deployed 25 teams of three trained surveyors each to visit 42 locations in each city covering major zones like railway stations, bus stations, religious places, major market places, planned and unplanned residential areas including slums and toilet complexes. He said the survey teams took a total of 3,066 geo-tagged photos of places visited as evidence and they were uploaded on website today.