Indore was adjudged India’s cleanest city for the sixth time in a row while Surat and Navi Mumbai followed it on the next two spots in the Central Government’s annual cleanliness survey 2022 awards, the results of which were announced on Saturday. Among the States, Madhya Pradesh secured the first position, followed by Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra.

The New Delhi Municipal Council area was ranked first in the “country’s cleanest small city” category, having a population between 1 lakh and 3 lakh. The NCR city of Noida has been ranked at 11th in the latest report compared to its 9th position in the 2021 survey report.

President Droupadi Murmu on Saturday gave away the awards to the winners at an event here also attended by Union Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri and others.

While Indore and Surat retained their top positions among cities, Vijaywada lost its third spot to Navi Mumbai. In the 10 top-ranked cities with a population of more than one lakh, the other cities are GVM Visakhapatnam, Vijaywada, Bhopal, Tirupati, Mysore, New Delhi, and Ambikapur.

According to officials, the processing of 1,900 tons of urban waste every day which earns it crores of rupees and also fuels its buses has helped Indore bag “India’s cleanest city” award for the sixth straight time. 

Agra was at the bottom in the list of 100 cities in this segment. Madhya Pradesh’s Gadarwara was at the bottom in the category of cities with less than one lakh population.

Among the States having fewer than 100 urban local bodies, Tripura has bagged the top rank, followed by Jharkhand and Uttarakhand, according to the survey results.

In the category of cities having population fewer than one lakh, Maharashtra’s Panchgani was ranked number one, followed by Chhattisgarh’s Patan (NP) and Maharashtra’s Karhad.

Haridwar was adjudged the cleanest Ganga town in the category of more than 1 lakh population, followed by Varanasi and Rishikesh.

Bijnor was ranked the first among Ganga towns with fewer than one lakh population. Followed by Kannauj and Garhmukhteshwar respectively.

Noida emerged as the country’s “best self sustainable medium city” in the category of 3-10 lakh population. Tirupati bagged the first award in the category of “Safaimitra Surakshit Sahar”.

Chandigarh has secured the first position in the category of “Fastest Mover State/National Capital or UT” while Vijayawada has emerged as the winner in the category of “Cleanest State/National Capital or UT”.

Vishakhapatnam got the first position as India’s “cleanest big city” in the category of 10-40 lakh population.

Meerut has emerged as the “Fastest Mover Big City” with population between 10 lakh and 40 lakh. In the category of “Best City in Maximum Citizen’s Participation” with more than lakh population, Ujjain has been ranked first.

Among the 62 Cantonment Boards, Deolali in Maharashtra emerged as the cleanest followed by Ahmedabad and Mhow in Madhya Pradesh. Delhi Cantonment Board finished 5th in the list.

The survey is being conducted since 2016. After Mysuru had managed to secure the top spot in the first survey, Indore has been on the top of the list since 2017. According to a Government statement, the survey was launched “as an assessment tool to analyse and compare the status of sanitation of Indian cities under the Swachh Bharat Mission”. “Although it started out with the assessment of only 73 cities, Swachh Survekshan 2022 has managed to accomplish the assessment of 4354 cities (Including 62 Cantonment Boards and 91 Ganga Towns),” the statement reads.

For the first time, the “citizen report card” was introduced for the survey, which was aimed to disseminate the information regarding the status of cleanliness in the city to the citizens. This covered different aspects such as segregated door to door waste collection, cleanliness of roads and public toilets, city beautification, cleanliness of market areas, residential areas, drains and water bodies, daily sweeping in residential areas, non-availability of open garbage dumps and citizen grievance redressal mechanism.

According to the Government, 126 ULBs from West Bengal did not participate in the annual cleanliness survey conducted by the Central Government. Over 19 lakh people gave face to face feedback. Nine crore citizens’ feedback was captured through various sources like Swachhatta app, Vote for your City app and “my gov app” among others during the survey that was 100 per cent digitised, with complete online submission for all documents by ULBs through a dedicated online portal, officials said.