NDMC cleanest among cities with 1-3 lakh people

NEW DELHI: New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) has been awarded the first rank for being the cleanest city in the country in the category of 1-3 lakh population under Swachh Survekshan 2021. It has also been adjudged a five-star garbage-free and water-plus city.
Delhi Cantonment has, however, slipped by a rank and stood third among the 62 cantonments surveyed by the Union housing and urban affairs ministry.
“The ministry has specified four categories for giving the clean city award in its toolkit and it included cities with 1-3 lakh, 3-10 lakh, 10-40 lakh and over 40 lakh population. We stood first in the 1-3 lakh small cities category,” said an NDMC official.
The civic body has scored the highest among the 372 cities judged in the 1-10 lakh category, as specified on the Swachh Survekshan 2021 website. It has been followed by Ambikapur, Tirupati and Noida. Last year, it stood third in the same category.
According to an NDMC statement, “We are continuously striving to establish excellence in service standards and aim to provide world-class civic amenities to its residents. In fact, NDMC, in association with the ministry, has made the event ‘zero garbage’. All these achievements have placed NDMC as Platinum City (Divya) in Prerak DAUUR Samman.”
Officials claimed they were making efforts to improve services. “We have 100% segregation at source, 100% processing of waste on a daily basis and there are no garbage dump points or garbage stations in the NDMC area,” claimed a senior official.
“Our dry waste is 100% processed and wet waste is used for composting. There are 53 compost pits, 26 organic waste convertors and six biomethanisation plants,” he added. A 20-metric-tonne compost plant is also fully operational.