Cleanliness, confusion and corporations: Bengaluru’s tough road to better Swachh rankings

Bengaluru: Ranked the ninth dirtiest city in India in the Swacch Sarvekshan Rankings 2024, the annual cleanliness survey conducted by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), Bengaluru is at a crossroads this year when it comes to Swachh rankings. 

Swachh rankings, conducted under the Swachh Bharat Urban Mission, assess the performance of Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) annually across various cleanliness parameters. ULBs must regularly update their monthly Management Information System (MIS), which will be validated through citizen feedback; final rankings will then be determined by MoHUA.

The ULBs, or corporations, must document indicator-level progress systematically from April to March, which will be uploaded and verified during the final survey in February-March 2026.

Bengaluru, which had a single corporation, the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike, was divided into five corporations in May 2025, but the new corporations were formalised only in September 2025. Since the Swachh Survekshan runs from January to December, newly formed corporations will not be able to participate in the survey this year.

Ideally, the new ULBs formed by December can participate in the survey next year, after the state formally writes to MoHUA to notify them. Bengaluru’s corporations can participate independently in Swachh Sarvekshan only from 2026-27 onward.

Swachh ranking this year

What does participating in Swachh Survekshan mean for a corporation? Every ULB (corporation) must submit applications for open defecation-free status, water management ratings and garbage-free city star rating. Of the 12,500 points awarded to a city, 3,500 carry major weight. Visible cleanliness carries 1,500 points, while information and advocacy activity carries 1,500 points. 

Grievance redressal system carries 1,000 points this year. “If a complaint is addressed in four hours, the weightage is maximum. Eight hours of waiting to solve the issue reduces the points. If the issue takes 24 hours to resolve, then the points will be zero,” explains Ram Prasad, co-founder of Friends of Lakes, who has worked with the BBMP for previous Swachh surveys.

“The three certifications (GFC, ODF++, and Water Plus) are crucial and should be prepared. If not, there's a high chance of losing Swachh Bharat Mission funds,” he adds. 

A city corporation should also diligently document efforts and outcomes throughout the year and upload data, documents, and geo-tagged photos to the dashboards. It should also ensure that the infrastructure required to maintain a clean city, such as toilets, sewage treatment plants, faecal waste management systems, and drains, is in place. When the auditors empanelled by the centre conduct surveys, the ULB should respond to observations, issue clarifications, and address non-compliances.

Given these complications, Ram Prasad says that this year the city can obtain the necessary certifications without participating in the survey itself, thereby ending confusion about how to manage the survey across five corporations.

However, officials familiar with the matter confirmed that the entire city of Bengaluru will participate as a single unit in the 2025-26 Swachh survey, with no separate surveys for the corporations.

The city’s sole waste management agency, Bengaluru Solid Waste Management Limited (BSWML), is about to finalise the tender to engage an agency for information, education, and communication activities related to Swachh Survekshan. Subsequently, various teams will be formed, and information and awareness programmes, as well as surveys, will be conducted, say sources.

Challenges for next year

If individual corporations were to participate in the 2026-27 Swachh rankings, to be released in 2027, the basic process should already have started, and all the corporations would need to demonstrate their waste-handling infrastructure. It carries 1,500 points in the current system.

“In the current situation, the existing processing plants and infrastructure need to be shown as divided between each of the five corporations,” he adds. This implies that every corporation must either develop its own designated infrastructure as soon as possible, or compete as one city next year, if the Swachh guidelines permit. 

This means that if one corporation is better than the others at waste management and cleanliness, that advantage will not be recognised, as the city is treated as a single unit.

While BSWML handles garbage collection, transportation, and processing, the Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) handles water and sanitation for the entire city and is responsible for water-related ratings, particularly for wastewater management. This is not dependent on BWSSB alone — each of the city corporations contributesto  the management of the mismanagement by way of enforcement of rules and regulations for treated water and building bylaws,

The city’s used-water management infrastructure is not in good shape, with private players such as apartments being unsure where excess treated water can go, and the state’s pollution watchdog failing to monitor and ensure quality in treated water. If five corporations do not have uniform rules and ways to handle used water, this can turn into a problem, reducing ratings

Many little things that matter

Padmashree Balaram, a member of the Solid Waste Management Round Table (SWMRT) and a resident of Koramangala, shares the success story of distributing 40 leaf-litter composting units across the city.

"The BSWML funded Rs 5 lakh for it. We got the leaf litter composting units fabricated and distributed them across the city, to the volunteers who said they will take care of them," she reveals. She is hopeful that the spread of composting culture will contribute to the no-garbage-on-the-ground policy.

Recently, Koramangala got a waste processing plant with segregation and biomethanisation facilities, backed by BSWML. The way wet and dry waste is processed and managed at the waste processing unit led Bengaluru South City Corporation Commissioner K N Ramesh to believe that similar plants could be established in all Assembly constituencies in the coming days. If this happens, it enables a corporation to manage waste more independently, providing a stronger foundation for participating in the Swachh survey.

Decentralisation through new corporations might have begun to address visual cleanliness in the city more effectively than before. Intensive cleaning drives and awareness programmes are now held more regularly across each corporation than before. For instance, the Bengaluru North corporation organises competitions among its wards during such drives, in which officials in each ward vie for the top spot through rigorous cleanliness initiatives.

Swachh rankings cannot be ignored, cautions Ram Prasad. “The global firms that come to our city do keep an eye on cleanliness rankings and infrastructure. It matters for the city's investment and economic status. Better rankings mean better prospects as a city,” he adds.