swachh bharat
swachh bharatIANS

Union Minister M Venkaiah Naidu announced the results of Swachh Survekshan on Monday by releasing a list of 73 top cleanest cities of the country. Mysuru maintained the top position for the second consecutive year, while Chandigarh was ranked second.

Other cities under the top 10 list are Tiruchirappalli in Tamil Nadu, New Delhi Municipal Council in the National Capital Territory of Delhi, Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh, Surat and Rajkot in Gujarat, Gangtok in Sikkim, Pimpri Chindwad and Greater Mumbai in Maharashtra.

The 10 least cleanest cities in the list were Varanasi, Dhanbad, Asansol, Patna, Meerut, Raipur, Ghaziabad, Jamshedpur, Kalyan Dombivilli and Itanagar, Hindustan Times reports.

The survey was conducted under Prime Minister Narendra Modi's pet project Swachh Bharat mission, launched on Oct. 2, 2014 — Mahatma Gandhi's birth anniversary. The mission was aimed to make India clean by October 2019, when India will celebrate Gandhi's 150th birth anniversary.

A total of 75 cities were selected for the 2016 ranking, but Noida and Kolkata opted out of the competition as it was not prepared, Live Mint reports.

The urban development ministry's Quality Council of India conducted Swachh Survekshan to access sanitation facilities. The survey also takes into consideration citizens' feedback.

Sanitation and hygiene in the selected cities were measured on the basis of: 

  • How cities proposed to stop open defecation and integrate solid waste management systems
  • Communication strategies on information, education and behaviour change
  • Systems adopted for sweeping, door-to-door collection and transportation of waste
  • Efficiency in processing and disposal of waste
  • Deployment of public and community toilets
  • Progress in construction of individual household toilets, according to IANS.

At least 110 people accessed over 50 locations, including bus stands, railway stations, planned and unplanned colonies, community toilets, religious places and market areas, in the 73 cities, quality council chairman Adil Zainulbhai said.

Rank-wise list of cities (Credit: PIB)
11 Pune 24 Bhubaneswar 37 Gurgaon 50 Guwahati 63 Jabalpur
12 Navi Mumabi 25 Indore 38 Bengaluru 51 Faridabad 64 Kalyan Dombivili (Maharashtra)
13 Vadodara 26 Madurai 39 South Muncipal Corporation of Delhi 52 East MCD 65 Varanasi
14.Ahmedabad 27 Shimla 40 Thiruvananthapuram 53 Shillong 66 Jamshedpur
15 Imphal 28 Lucknow 41 Aizawl 54 Hubbali-Dharwad (Karnataka) 67 Ghaziabad
16 Panaji 29 Jaipur 42 Gandhinagar 55 Kochi 68 Raipur
17 Thane 30 Gwalior 43 North MCD 56 Aurangabad 69 Meerut
18.Coimbatore 31 Nashik 44 Kozhikode 57 Jodhpur 70 Patna
19 Hyderabad 32 Warangal 45 Kanpur 58 Kota 71 Itanagar
20 Nagpur 33 Agartala 46 Durg 59 Cuttack 72 Asansol
21 Bhopal 34 Ludhiana 47 Agra 60 Kohima 73 Dhanbad
22 Allahabad 35 Vasai-Virar 48 Srinagar 61 Dehradun
23 Vijayawada 36 Chennai 49 Amritsar 62 Ranchi