Having three of its cities ranked under top 10 in the country, Andhra Pradesh has topped southern states with more than 100 Urban Local Bodies in the Swachh Survekshan 2020 ranking, an annual cleanliness ranking survey by the Central government. It has also turned out to be the only State in south to have three cities in the top 10 rankings.
The State scored 1785.65 points and stood sixth while Chhattisgarh with 3293.56 points and topped the country of all 12 such states. Neighbouring Tamil Nadu is the only other southern state in the category and has settled at 10th place scoring 1156.01 points.
Vijayawada, Tirupati and Visakhapatnam bagged places in the top 10 best performing cities in two categories.
In the national ranking of cities with more than 10 lakh population, Vijayawada secured fourth place with 5280.32 score and Visakhapatnam secured ninth place with 4918.44 crore. In all, 47 cities were ranked under this category. In 2019, Vijayawada was ranked 12 and in 2018 it was ranked five. Similarly, Visakhapatnam was ranked 23 in 2019 and seven in 2018.
In the national ranking of 382 cities with a population between 1 lakh to 10 lakh, Tirupati bagged sixth place with 5142.76 points.
Next to it, Rajahmundry ranked 51, Ongole ranked 57, Kakinada 58, Tenali 75, Kadapa 76, Chittoor 81, Hindupur 93 and Tadipatri 99.
As many as 20 other ULBS from the State including Guntur, Kurnool, Nellore and other cities ranked beyond 100.
Also, among the top 25 cities with more than one lakh population, Vijayawada bagged sixth place. It is followed by Tirupati at 12th place and Visakhapatnam at 17th place. Andhra Pradesh is the only southern State to have more than one city in the top 25 list.
A total of 4,242 ULBs of the country took part in the ranking survey and Andhra Pradesh has 110 ULBs.