Mandi in Himachal Pradesh is the cleanest among 22 well-performing districts in the Hills while Sindhudurg in Maharashtra tops the list of 53 in the plains, as per a Swachchh survey in rural areas.
The districts were assessed under the Gramin Swachchh Survekshan launched by the Union Water and Sanitation Ministry in May.
The top 10 cleanest districts in plains as per the Quality Council of India (QCI) survey, whose findings were released by Union Rural Development Minister Narendra Singh Tomar here on Thursday, are Satara, Kolhapur, Ratnagiri and Thane in Maharashtra; Nadia, Midnapur East and Hoogly in West Bengal; Udupi in Karnataka and Churu in Rajasthan.
From the hilly regions, Shimla, Hamirpur, Kullu and Chamba in Himachal Pradesh; West Sikkim, East Sikkim, South Sikkim and North Sikkim in Sikkim and Mizoram's Champhai districts have made it to the top 10 cleanest districts.
The survey puts Bikaner, Ajmer, Pali and Dungarpur in Rajasthan; Ahmedabad, Anand and Panchmahal in Gujarat; Gadag in Karnataka; Sirsa in Haryana and Perambaluru in Tamil Nadu at the bottom of the list relating to districts in plains.
On the other hand, Anjaw, Papum Pare, Changlang, West Siang and West Kameng in Arunachal Pradesh; Jaintia Hills, East Garo Hills and Ri Bhoi in Meghalaya; Bongaigaon in Assam and lahul and Spiti in Himachal Pradesh are ranked at the bottom of the list of districts from hilly belt in North-East and Special Category.
The Ministry though maintained that the districts placed at the bottom of the list were not "worst performing".
"Ever since the survey was launched nearly two years ago, we had identified 75 better performing districts as far as the Swachchh Bharat campaign is considered. So, we carried out a third party field survey of these districts to see the reality this year," said Tomar.
The QCI surveyed 70,000 households before ranking them. It studied more than 1,050 households in plain regions, while in hilly areas, over 350 households were inspected, the report said.
The survey on sanitation was conducted based on four parameters — percentage of households having access to safe toilets and their usage, households having no litter around, average score of cleanliness around public places and households having no wastewater around.
Parameswaran Iyer, Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation Secretary said that 18 districts, 237 blocks, over 34,000 gram panchayats and little more than 76,000 villages had already declared themselves as open defecation free (ODF). The Government targets to make India ODF by 2019.