Hardeep Puri Congratulates Swachhata Survekshan 2018 Winners – Indore, Bhopal & Chandigarh Emerge as The Top 3 Cleanest Cities in The Country

New Delhi: Shri Hardeep Puri, Minister for Housing & Urban Affairs has congratulated the winners of Swachh Survekshan 2018 while announcing the results at the National Media Centre here today.  The Swachh Survekshan 2018 assessed 4203 Urban Local Bodies and was organized by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), under the aegis of the Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban).  The exercise undertaken between 4^th January 2018 to 10^th March, 2018 enhanced the   scope to cover a record number of Urban Local Bodies impacting around 40 crore urban citizens across length and breadth of the country by 2700 assessors.  As compared to  2017 where Swachh Survekshan was conducted in 434 cities, this year the scope was enhanced manifold.  Shri Durga Shankar Mishra, Secretary, Shri V,K.Jindal, Mission Director of SBM-Urban besides officers from the Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs were also present at the function.

During Swachh Survekshan 2018, a record number of 37.66 lakh citizen feedbacks were collected and 53.58 lakh Swachhata Apps downloaded.  The total number of interactions on Swachhata App by citizens were around 1.18 crore.  In 2016, Swachh Survekshan was conducted in 73 cities having a population of one million or more and capital city of States/ UTs and Mysore had bagged the award of being the cleanest city of India.  In 2017, the scope of Swachh Survekshan was enlarged to cover 434 cities having a population of one lakh or more and Capital city of states/ UTs and Indore was awarded as cleanest city of India.

The on-field survey for Swachh Survekshan has been conducted by an independent agency and the data for ranking of the cities collected from 3 sources:

1. Service Level Progress:  To verify whether systems and processes are in place in Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) to implement Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban) in the most efficient way.

2. Direct Observation: To verify and assess general cleanliness in the cities by making random field visits in different parts of the city and public conveniences (Community/Public Toilets).

3. Citizens Feedback:  To collect feedback directly from citizens and monitor the performance of Swachhata App, a citizens grievance Mobile App.

The overall and component wise weightage for Swachh Survekshan-2018 had a shift from Swachh Survekshan-2017 weightages. The weightages are produced below :

Under ‘Service Level Progress’, Swachh Surveksan-2018 has introduced one more component ‘Innovation and Best Practices’ in addition to existing five components shown below:

Citizens played a key role in the survey.  Higher weightage was given on citizen feedback alongwith direct observation by assessors on the performance parameters of Swachhta by their local bodies. The focus of Swachh Survekshan 2018 was on the outcome, innovation and sustainability of initiatives taken by Urban Local Bodies under Swachh Bharat Mission. The highlights of Swachh Survekshan-2018 are as below – 

Cities having population of one lakh and more and capital cities were ranked at National Level and cities with population of less than one lakh were ranked at Zonal Level – North, south, East, West and North East. Based on the performance in Swacch Survekshan, 2018, it has been decided to confer awards 29 cities/ cantonment boards at National Level, 20 cities at Zonal Level and 3 states having the best performance in the urban areas. While deciding the awards, it has been kept in mind that one city gets only one award i.e the category in which it has performed the best. In case a city has already been awarded in some category, next best is awarded in the other category.

At the national level, the Top 3 cleanest cities are: (Madhya Pradesh)                                

• Indore
• Bhopal
• Chandigarh

The list of 52 awardees under various categories is given in Annexure.

Annexure