This year, a total of 1.9 crore citizens across 4,242 cities of the country participated in the survey. (Representataional)Maharashtra was ranked the second cleanest state in India in the Swachh Survekshan 2020, the Centre’s annual survey on cleanliness under the Swachh Bharat Mission, with the state bagging the highest number of awards for the third consecutive year.
Thirty-one cities of 43 in Maharashtra, with a population of over a lakh, figured in the 100 top cleanest cities in the annual cleanliness survey rankings announced Thursday. Mumbai, however, slipped several notches on the count.
Having bagged the tag of the cleanest state capital and ranked 18 overall nationwide in 2018, Mumbai failed to figure in the top 100 list of cities this year. Even among the 47 big cities, with a population of 10 lakh or more, it ranked 35th. It’s satellite town, Navi Mumbai, in contrast, improved its performance and bagged the third spot overall among the cleanest cities.
In the overall rankings, Chandrapur was the other city from the state to figure in top 10, bagging the ninth slot. Thane was ranked 31st, Pune 36, and Nagpur 44. In the category of smaller towns, 20 of top 25 cleanest towns were from Maharashtra, with Karad (in Satara), Saswad (Pune) and Lonavala (Raigad) bagging the top three spots.
The Centre on Thursday announced 141 cities as garbage free. Of these, 77 were from Maharashtra. The state had also bagged the maximum number of awards. In 2018, it was similarly ranked second overall, while in 2019 it had slipped to the third position.
Mumbai, however, had a poorer showing as compared to last edition. As per the final results announced by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), the financial capital scored 3106.39 out of the total of 6,000 marks. In 2019, it had scored 3,277 out of 5,000. Over 2.8 lakh Mumbaikars had also given the feedback for this year’s exercise.
While the Mumbai municipality had also applied for a five-star rating under “Garbage-free cities (GFC)” certification, it received a nil. It ended up scoring 300 out of maximum 1,500 marks under the GFC category. The star rating conditions are based on 25 key parameters, further divided as mandatory, desirable and essential, including plastic ban, waste processing, garbage-free water bodies and storm water drains.
Navi Mumbai, the cleanest in the state and ranked third overall, has bagged five-star rating under the GFC certification.
In last four years, this year’s rank is lowest for Mumbai. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation has blamed certification for the poor ranking.
“This year we lost marks to the GFC certification. We had applied for the five-star rating under the category,” said Kiran Dighavkar, officer-in-charge of Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. In 2019, BMC had refused to charge user fee for solid waste management services, which is one of the “essential” GFC parameters.
The Swachh Survekshan ranks cites across the country in the categories of cleanliness and sanitation on four parameters — direct observations, citizen feedback, service-level progress and certification with 1,500 marks allotted for each category.
This year, a total of 1.9 crore citizens across 4,242 cities of the country participated in the survey.