Team News Riveting
Raipur, November 20
Chhattisgarh emerged as the ‘Cleanest State’ in the category of “more than 100 Urban Local Bodies” for the third consecutive year.
Jharkhand, for the second time, won the Cleanest State award in the “less than 100 ULBs category” while Karnataka and Mizoram became the ‘Fastest Mover States’ in the big (more than 100 ULBs) and small (less than 100 ULBs) state category respectively.
For the fifth consecutive year, Indore was awarded the title of India’s Cleanest City under Swachh Survekshan, while Surat and Vijayawada bagged the second and third spots respectively in the ‘more than 1 lakh population’ category. In the population category of ‘less than 1 lakh’, Vita, Lonavala and Sasvad, all from Maharashtra, bagged the first, second and third positions respectively. Varanasi emerged as the ‘Best Ganga Town’ while Ahmedabad Cantonment won the title of ‘India’s Cleanest Cantonment’, followed by Meerut Cantonment and Delhi Cantonment. In the category of ‘Fastest Mover’, Hoshangabad (Madhya Pradesh) emerged as the ‘Fastest Mover City’ (in the ‘more than 1 lakh population’ category) with a jump of 274 ranks from 361st position in the 2020 rankings to the 87th position this year, thus securing a place among the top 100 cities.
The President, Ram Nath Kovind today felicitated the awardees of the cleanest cities of India at the ‘Swachh Amrit Mahotsav’ hosted as part of Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban 2.0 by Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs (MoHUA) at Vigyan Bhavan, New Delhi. The award ceremony, organized to recognize the good work done for Swachhata by towns/ cities, States and Union Territories under various initiatives of the Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban), viz. Swachh Survekshan 2021, Safaimitra Suraksha Challenge, and certifications for Garbage Free Star rating for cities – saw more than 300 awards under various categories being given away through the day.
Chhattisgarh has also bagged the award for best performing State under the Safaimitra Suraksha Challenge.
The vision of a Garbage Free India under SBM-U 2.0 was given further impetus by announcing the results of 3-star and 5-star rated cities under the Star Rating Protocol of Garbage Free Cities. A total of 9 cities – Indore, Surat, New Delhi Municipal Council, Navi Mumbai, Ambikapur, Mysuru, Noida, Vijayawada and Patan- have been certified as 5 star cities while 143 cities have been certified as 3 star. The Star Rating Protocol of Garbage Free Cities was introduced as a SMART framework by MoHUA in 2018, to holistically evaluate cities across solid waste management parameters. In 2018, only 56 cities were awarded certification on some star rating. This year, the number has gone up manifold with 2,238 cities applying for the assessment. The mammoth exercise was completed successfully despite the COVID-19 restrictions as is evidenced in the numbers – 1.4 crore photographic evidence collected across 3.5 crore data points, along with 14.19 lakh citizen validation and 1 lakh locations covered during the assessment period.
Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel received the award at the hands of President Ram Nath Kovind at the Swachh Amrit Mahotsav held at Vigyan Bhawan.
