GHAZIABAD: Ghaziabad was on Wednesday ranked 13th in the Swachh Survekshan ( clean cities survey), 2019 released by the Union urban ministry, jumping 23 spots from last year’s 36.

It also emerged as number one in Uttar Pradesh. Only four other cities from the state — Kanpur (63), Varanasi (70), Agra (85) and Saharanpur (92) — managed to make it to the top 100. A total of 4,237 cities had participated in the survey.

From a rank of 351 in 2017, Ghaziabad has seen a massive turnaround in the last two years, with the Ghaziabad Municipal Corporation ( GMC ) taking several steps, among them door-to-door collection of garbage and a construction and debris (C&D) plant, ensuring visible difference in the city’s cleanliness.

Dinesh Chandra, who took charge as municipal commissioner of GMC in February this year, said it was a race against time ahead of the survey. “The odds were stacked against us. The Swachh Survekshan started on January 4 and continued till January 31. This was the time when the NGT (National Green Tribunal) committee on waste management barred us from dumping waste at Pratap Vihar landfill site and we were struggling to dispose of about 1,000 metric tonnes of civic waste,” said Chandra.

“It was against this backdrop that we started our preparation and we are glad that we managed to improve our ranking by 23 spots,” he added. The survey used four parameters — service level progress, certification, direct observation, and citizen feedback and Swachhata app. Each parameter carried 1,250 points.

Ghaziabad scored 1,201 points under direct observation, 993 under citizen feedback and Swachhata app, 983 for service level progress and 700 for certification. Its overall score was 3,877 out of 5,000 points.

The Swachh Survekshan team visited the C&D recycling plant in Hindon Vihar, the Sai Upvan compost plant that converts waste from religious places, and another in Navyug mandi that converts vegetable waste to compost. “These are novel concepts and hardly practised elsewhere in the state. Their efficacy left a good impression on the team and it explains the 1,201 points that we got under the direct observation head,” added Chandra.

Citizen feedback and the Swachhata app also played key roles in the city’s impressive performance. “We got into the act quite early and by the end of the survey, we had 118,000 downloads for the Swachhata app, which in turn enabled us to get citizen feedback in large numbers. Many of the suggestions were incorporated,” said Chandra.

