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Big Surprises

Matters of concern

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NEW DELHI: Indore has been ranked as the cleanest city in India while Gonda in Uttar Pradesh has been ranked the dirtiest among 434 cities, a government survey has found. Bhopal, another city from MP has been ranked second while Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh and Surat in Gujarat have emerged as the third and fourth cleanest cities.Mysuru in Karnataka , which topped the list in the 2015 survey covering 73 million-plus cities, has slipped to number five in the list while Tiruchirapally in Tamil Nadu gets the sixth rank, followed by New Delhi Municipal Council at number seven. Union urban development minister M Venkaiah Naidu announced the results today.Cities in West Bengal have not been ranked as the Mamata Banerjee government did not participate in the Swachh Survekshan.Though there cannot be absolute comparison between the rankings of 2016 and for 2017 since the parameters have been tweaked, it's evident from the results that six of the top 10 clean cities of 2017: Indore, Bhopal, Visakhapatnam, Surat, Tirupati and Vadodara have improved their sanitation rankings.The criteria for this year's ranking included 45% marks for cities becoming open defecation free, solid waste management (including sweeping, collection, transportation and processing of garbage), education and capacity building. Another 25% marks was kept for field inspection and 30% for citizen feedback. At least 18 lakh citizens across the cities gave their feedback about the sanitation in their respective cities and towns.According to the survey, four of the dirtiest cities are from UP, two each from Bihar and Punjab and one each from Uttarakhand and Maharashtra.It shows that Jharkhand and Chattisgarh have emerged as the best performing states in Swachh Survekshan while UP and Bihar remain the biggest concerns. According to the results, 50 of the 62 cities/towns surveyed in UP are ranked 305 and below among all. UP's 41 cities and towns are among the bottom 100 cities. Varanasi is the only saving grace with a rank of 32.In case of Bihar 19 of 27 cities and towns surveyed are ranked beyond 300 with best rank in the state being 147 for Biharsharif. The survey shows 15 of these 27 cities are among the bottom 100.While Gujarat, MP and Andhra Pradesh did well in sanitation rankings, Jharkhand and Chattisgarh emerge as the major success stories. NDMC and the three Municipal Corporations of East, South and North have significantly improved their rankings while Delhi Cantonment has reported substantial decline.While East and South MCDs have improved over 2016 rankings, NDMC has slipped marginally.Besides UP and Bihar, Rajasthan, Punjab and Kerala remain a cause of concern as well. In Rajasthan, 18 of 29 cities/towns surveyed are ranked beyond 300 and 13 are among the bottom 100. Best rank for the state being 171 for Bundi.In the case of Kerala, of the nine cities surveyed in 2017, best rank for the state is 254 for Kozhikode (Calicut) and four are among the bottom 100.Similarly, in Punjab out of the 16 cities/ towns surveyed, best rank for the state is 121 for SAS Nagar and seven among the bottom 100 ranks.