The City Beautiful failed to find its place in the top ten cleanest cities in the country and had to be content with 16th rank in the latest Swachh Survekshan ranking 2020 announced on Thursday. Earlier, Chandigarh was ranked third cleanest city in 2018 while the ranking had dropped to poor 20th in 2019.
The fifth edition of the annual cleanliness survey of urban India was conducted across 4242 cities in January, 2020. The Swachh Survekshan is conducted to study the progress of Swachh Bharat Mission (urban) and rank cities based-on cleanliness and sanitation parameters.
Four parameters were used for arriving at the overall ranking of a city – Certification (1500), Direct Observation – DO (1500), Service Level Progress – SLP (1500) and Citizen Feedback (1500).
Indore in Madhya Pradesh was ranked the country’s cleanest city (having a population of more than 1 lakh). While the top cleanest city, Indore scored 94.12 percent (5647.56) of the total 6000 marks under the SS2020, Chandigarh scored 82.83 percent (4970). The city had last year scored an overall of 75.74 percent on all parameters.
According to the survey, the civic body’s solid waste management, particularly waste segregation and disposal remained poor in the SS 2020. On Service Level Progress (SLP), the parameter indicative of efficiency of solid waste management, Chandigarh’s performance percentage dropped from 90 percent last year to 76.33 percent this year.
In the Direct Observation category, the city has improved its score to 96.85 percent in 2020 from last year’s 89.60 percent.
A major factor in the city’s climb from 20th to 16th position this year was it doubling its score in the certifications parameter. In the certification category, the union territory improved its score from 40 percent last year to 73.33 percent this year.
The city managed to achieve ODF++ ranking from its ODF rank in 2019. Similarly, the city also gained 3-Star GFC status from its earlier 2-Star GFC which helped the city to improve its national ranking this year, as per the survey.
Commenting on the ranking, former Union Minister and ex-city MP Pawan Kumar Bansal said, “According to a report of the Centre for Science and Environment based on Swachh Bharat Mission inputs, Chandigarh has recorded 90 per cent waste processing, 100 per cent door-to-door collection of garbage and in 24 of the 26 wards 95 per cent segregation of waste. These high claims are not only untrue but border on the ludicrous and bizarre.
“One does not need a deep research to find the truth. It presents itself even during a cursory drive in posh sectors of the city, not to talk of its underbelly - the labour colonies. It is unfortunate that Chandigarh, popularly known as City Beautiful has ranked 16th in the list of cleanest cities of the country and failed to figure in the list of top cities,” Bansal added