Bengaluru 28th cleanest among 10 lakh-plus cities, is Fastest Mover Megacity

Jumping up nine places on the list of India’s 48 cleanest cities with more than a million population, Bengaluru on Saturday bagged the ‘fastest-mover megacity’ award.

The city moved from the 37th to the 28th position in the latest Swachh Survekshan rankings to get the coveted award presented by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. Eight other municipal corporations in the state have also bagged awards under various categories.

Bengaluru had introduced several programmes to improve its performance at the national level. The city last year secured 2,656.82 out of 6,000 points, while this year it received 3,585.56 points. But in the overall ranking that includes the performance of 4,320 cities, the civic body slipped by 89 points to the 303rd rank from last year’s 214th rank.

BBMP officials asserted that the comparison can be fair only if it is made with cities of similar populations. “The infrastructure and programmes differ for larger cities. Smaller cities can’t be compared with Bengaluru,” the BBMP’s Special Commissioner (SWM) Dr Harish Kumar said.

Interestingly, the BBMP did not score a single point under the garbage-free city ratings.

“We have received the Fastest Mover Megacity award in recognition of our long-term initiatives. We have been successful in initiating a number of measures in all the fields of solid waste management. Be it civic workers’ safety or waste segregation at source, we have come out with initiatives to improve our performance,” Kumar said.

He agreed that they need to work on improving citizen feedback scores. “That is one of our weak areas and we will make sure we score better next time,” he said.

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