Swachh Survekshan 2021

In news– Recently, the President of India 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 the Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs (MoHUA).

Key highlights-

The award ceremony, organized to recognize the good work done for Swachhata by towns/ cities, States and UTs under various initiatives of the Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban), Swachh Survekshan 2021, Safaimitra Suraksha Challenge, and certifications for Garbage Free Star rating for cities.
Swachh Survekshan is an annual survey of cleanliness, hygiene and sanitation in cities and towns across India.
It was launched by MoHUA in 2016 as part of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, which aimed to make India clean and free of open defecation by 2nd October 2019.
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), with a jump of 274 ranks from 361st position in the 2020 rankings, jumped to the 87th position this year.
In the State awards, Chhattisgarh, for the third consecutive year emerged as the ‘Cleanest State’ in the category of “more than 100 Urban Local Bodies” while Jharkhand, for the second time, won the Cleanest State award in the “less than 100 ULBs category”.
Among the States, Chhattisgarh and Chandigarh bagged the award for best performing State and Union Territory under the Challenge.
Karnataka and Mizoram became the ‘Fastest Mover States’ in the big (more than 100 ULBs) and small (less than 100 ULBs) state category respectively.
Maharashtra has successfully bagged a total of 92 awards, the highest by any State in this year’s Survekshan, followed by Chhattisgarh with 67 awards.
Additionally, under the Prerak Daaur Samman, a new performance category introduced under Swachh Survekshan 2021, five cities – Indore, Surat, Navi Mumbai, New Delhi Municipal Council and Tirupati were categorized as ‘Divya’ (Platinum).
Indore, Navi Mumbai, Nellore and Dewas emerged as the top performers, across different population categories among 246 participating cities in the Safaimitra Suraksha Challenge, launched last year by MoHUA to eradicate human fatalities from hazardous cleaning of sewers and septic tanks.
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.