by THO
Indore and Surat were declared the joint cleanest cities of India as part of the Swachh Survekshan Awards presented by President Draupadi Murmu on Thursday.
This was the seventh time that Indore won the accolade of the cleanest city in India.
Navi Mumbai which came third in last year’s awards, retained its position.
Saswad in Maharashtra got the cleanest city award for urban centres with less than 1 lakh population. Patan in Chattisgarh and Lonavla in Maharashtra were the second and third cleanest cities in this category. Varanasi and Prayagraj were adjudged cleanest Ganga Towns.
MHOW Cantonment Board in Madhya Pradesh was given the award for cleanest cantonment town.
Union minister of housing and urban affairs Hardeep Singh Puri and secretary Manoj Joshi were present in the dais when the cities were awarded.
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Swachh Survekshan, conducted by the union ministry of housing and urban affairs (MoHUA) under the Swachh Bharat Urban Mission since 2016, is the world’s largest urban sanitation and cleanliness survey.
The exercise acts as a competition among towns and cities to improve their cleanliness, waste management service delivery to citizens.
Officials at the MoHUA said that the primary goal of Swachh Survekshan was to encourage large-scale citizen participation and create awareness amongst all sections of society about the importance of working together towards making towns and cities better places to reside in.
This year, which is the eighth year of the survey, a total of 3,000 assessors conducted the assessment of more than 4,500 cities across 46 indicators.
Some of these indicators include segregated door-to-door waste collection, zero waste events, disabled-friendly toilets, improved plastic waste management.
