Swachh Survekshan: Maharashtra named the cleanest state in India

Maharashtra secured the top spot as the cleanest state in the country in the bestperforming states category with Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh following the rankings In the previous annual survey Madhya Pradesh had earned the title of the cleanest stateIn the Swachh Survekshan Awards 2023 Navi Mumbai in Maharashtra maintained its third position and Sasvad received the cleanest city award among 3970 cities with a population of less than one lakh Lonavala secured the third positionIndore in Madhya Pradesh claimed the title of the cleanest city in India for the seventh consecutive time as revealed in the Central governments annual cleanliness survey results announced on Thursday Surat shared the top rank in this survey marking a significant achievementThree cities of West Bengal Madhyamgram 444th rank Kalyani 445th rank and Haora 446th rank occupied the bottom rankingsAmong the bottom three in the state category includes Rajasthan Mizoram and Arunachal PradeshVaranasi is the cleanest Ganga town followed by Prayagraj Bijnor Haridwar Kannauj Patna Rishikesh Kanpur Rajmahal and Sahiganj Among the 88 Ganga towns Chhapra is ranked the lastAlso read ISRO presented with Indian of the Year Award for 2023 in the Outstanding Achievement categoryIn the category of cleanest cantonment boards Madhya Pradeshs Mhow topped the chart while Deolali in Nashik and Ahmedabad were on other two spotsPresident Droupadi Murmu gave away the awards to the winners at an event held here Union Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri attended the eventAccording to the data 4477 urban local bodies participated in the Swachh Survekshan 2023 and 12 core citizen responses were received 92720 municipal wards 61 cantonment boards 88 Ganga towns and 18980 commercial areas participated in the survey The government claims it to be the worlds largest cleanliness surveySpeaking at the event Murmu said that the Swachh Survekshan conducted with wide participation is an important step towards raising the level of cleanlinessThe President said that about onethird of Indias population live in urban areas adding that cleanliness of cities and towns is essential for their health and developmentBesides Indore and Surat the list of top 10 cleanest cities with more than one lakh population includes Navi Mumbai Greater Visakhapatnam Bhopal Vijayawada New Delhi Tirupati Greater Hyderabad and PuneIn the state category Odisha is ranked fourth followed by Telangana Andhra Pradesh Punjab Gujarat Uttar Pradesh Tamil Nadu Sikkim Karnataka Goa Haryana and BiharThe Union Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry said that the clean city awards prioritise addressing legacy dumpsites managing plastic waste implementing the principles of reducereuserecycle and ensuring the safety of safaimitrasThe Swachh Survekshan 2023 focused on transforming waste into valuable resources and was evaluated by a team of over 3000 assessors As many as 110 awards were bestowed during the ceremony Evaluation parameters gave 51 per cent weightage to service level progress segregated collection of waste processing amp disposal and safaimitra suraksha 26 per cent to certification ODF and other things and 23 per cent to citizens voiceUnion minister Puri said I am proud to say that all urban local bodies are open defecation free in India because swachhata has become a peoples movementAccording to the ministry the primary goal of Swachh Survekshan is to encourage large scale citizen participation and create awareness among all sections of society about the importance of working together towards making towns and cities better places to live in With inputs from PTI