JOIN USDelhi may be the seat of power but on cleanliness index, it settled to 16th rank among cities, according to the Centre’s Swachh Bharat rankings released on Saturday, in which north Indian towns painted a grim picture while cities in south India emerged with glowing colours.
Mysuru topped the list in which only three cities outside south India found themselves in top ten. The only solace for Delhi was that it found space in top-five list of most clean capital cities in the country.
The rankings were based on a survey which considered the prevalence and extent of open defecation and solid waste management (SWM) practices in 476 cities. Mysuru led with minimal open defecation and extensive adoption of SWM practices.
Among the capital cities, Bengaluru topped the list with a cumulative score of 26.11 followed by Thiruvananthapuram (26.02), Gangtok (25.40), Delhi (25.10) and Chandigarh (24.75). On the open defecation front, Delhi scored 12.13 out of 20 marks while on sewage management it got 12.98.
However, several towns in the National Capital Region did not have an impressive show in the survey. In the bottom-ten, there were four towns from the NCR – Gurgaon (466), Rewari (469), Bhiwani (473) and Palwal (474).
Painting a grim picture of cleanliness in north Indian cities, the survey showed that only 12 cities found place in top 100 while 74 cities found place in bottom 100. Among the bottom 100 cities, 21 from the East, three from the West and two are from the South.
The least clean cities were Damoh (Madhya Pradesh) that took the last position of 476, preceded by Bhind (MP), Palwal and Bhiwani, both in Haryana, Chittaurgarh (Rajasthan), Bulandshahar (UP), Neemuch (MP), Rewari (Haryana), Hindaun (Rajasthan) and Sambalpur in Odisha at 467th rank.
In the overall rankings, four Karnataka cities — Mysuru, Hassan, Mandya and Bengaluru — found space in top ten. Hassan was ranked fifth and Mandya sixth.