Swachh Bharat Rankings 2018: Indore Tops Again, Chennai Breaks Into Top 100; Poor Show by Bengal

New Delhi: Indore won the cleanest city tag for the second time in a row, while 19 of the 25 dirtiest cities in the country are in West Bengal, a nationwide cleanliness survey by the Union housing and urban affairs ministry has found.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was in Indore on Saturday and gave away the awards for the performance, congratulated the city and said it inspired the rest of the country in cleanliness. Indore was followed by Bhopal and Chandigarh.

Cities were ranked on the basis of their performance on six parameters, including collection and transportation of municipal solid waste, their processing and disposal, sanitation-related progress, innovation and best practices adopted by them.

West Bengal, which did not participate in the last two surveys in 2016 and 2017, performed abysmally. Cities such as Darjeeling, Siliguri, Serampore, Madhyamgram, North Barrackpore and Bankura, fared low on indicators of waste collection, open defecation, solid waste processing and disposal, the survey found.

The Greater Chennai Corporation made a surprise entry into the list at the 100th position. Only four cities in Tamil Nadu — Coimbatore, Trichy, Erode and Chennai — have found a place in the top 100 list.

Meanwhile, it was a mixed bag for Delhi in the latest rankings, with the civic bodies governing Lutyens’ Zone, south Delhi and the cantonment area performing exceedingly well as compared to their north and east counterparts.

The Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)-led South Delhi Municipal Corporation (SDMC) made a huge jump to the 32nd position in the country from its last rank of 202. While the North Delhi Municipal Corporation (NDMC) managed to still move up the ladder from 279 to 206, the EDMC plummeted to 341. South Delhi Mayor Narendra Chawla said construction of 164 community toilets and 34 public toilets, technology-based monitoring of 400 public facilities, allowing the use of toilets in hotels and restaurants for free for women and children in major markets helped in boosting the ranking.

Among states, Jharkhand topped the list, followed by Maharashtra and Chhattisgarh.

The Prime Minister launched the ambitious Swachh Bharat Abhiyan four years ago. The Clean Survey, 2018, was organised to evaluate cleanliness in urban areas. In all 4,203 cities were surveyed in the country from January 4 to March 10.