New Delhi, Mar 1 (UNI) Mr Durga Shanker Mishra, Secretary, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) on Monday launched the field assessment of Swachh Survekshan (SS) 2021, the sixth edition of the annual cleanliness survey conducted by the Government, at a web event here.
The SS was introduced by MoHUA in 2016 as a competitive framework to encourage cities to improve the status of urban sanitation while encouraging large scale citizen participation.
Speaking at the webinar, Mr Mishra said, 'SS has led to a spirit of healthy competition among cities and towns of India. The journey that started in 2016 with only 73 cities with million plus population has grown manifold, with 434 cities in 2017, 4,203 cities in 2018, 4,237 cities in 2019 and 4,242 cities in SS 2020, including 62 Cantonment Boards. Cities have been regularly filling in their data, updating their progress in the MIS along with running several citizen centric campaigns in preparation of SS 2021. Today, we are happy to formally kick off the survey as more than 2,000 assessors get ready to go on the field to assess the performance of cities.'
Every year, the on-field assessments for SS takes place between January 4-31. However, the same had been delayed by two months due to the COVID pandemic and will now be conducted between March 1-28. The Swachh Survekshan framework is redesigned innovatively every year, to ensure that the process becomes more robust. Keeping in mind the Ministry's efforts towards ensuring sustainability of the sanitation value chain, the SS 2021 indicators focus on parameters pertaining to wastewater treatment and reuse along with faecal sludge. Similarly, the crucial issues of legacy waste management and remediation of landfills have also been brought to the fore in this edition of Survekshan.
Mr Mishra also touched upon how SS has become a tool for citizen engagement in the spirit of a true 'Jan Andolan'.
Elaborating on the same, Mr Mishra said, 'I am happy to share that the SS 2021 has already garnered over 3 crore citizen feedback through a variety of platforms such as the Vote for Your City App, Swachhata App and Swachh Survekshan portal, amongst others.'
The Ministry further announced that apart from ranking cities and states, this year, SS would also be ranking districts (basis the performance of their cities).
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