SYLLABUS

GS-3: Environmental pollution and degradation.

Context: President of India Droupadi Murmu conferred the Swachh Survekshan Awards 2025–26 at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi, recognising the best-performing cities and Urban Local Bodies (ULBs) for their contributions to urban cleanliness and sanitation under the Swachh Bharat Mission–Urban (SBM-U).

Key Findings

• Improved Rankings: More than 350 ULBs improved their rankings by over 500 positions, while 1,700+ ULBs with populations below 50,000 improved their rankings compared to 2024–25.

• Super Swachh League: Navi Mumbai (Maharashtra), Surat (Gujarat) and Vijayawada (Andhra Pradesh) secured the top three positions.

• Million-Plus Population Category: Greater Visakhapatnam, Jabalpur and Lucknow secured the first, second and third positions, respectively.

• Other Population Categories:

• 3–10 lakh: Ujjain, Chandigarh and Guntur.
• 50,000–3 lakh: Dewas, New Delhi Municipal Council (NDMC) and Sagar.
• 20,000–50,000: Vita, Aska and Panaji.

• New Award Categories:

• Clean Himalayan Cities: Rudrapur, Jammu and Shopian.
• Swachh River Front Towns: Rewa, Bilaspur and Varanasi.
• Swachh Coastal Towns: Puri, Alappuzha and Ratnagiri.

• State First Swachh City Award: Conferred on 30 top-performing cities. Union Territories were classified into two categories: up to five ULBs and more than five ULBs.

• State First Swachh City Award: Conferred on 30 top-performing cities to recognise excellence across States and Union Territories.

• Government Performance: Urban waste processing increased from 16% to 80% since 2014, while door-to-door waste collection coverage increased from 44% to over 96%. 

• Remediation of legacy waste dumpsites has freed nearly 11,000 acres of urban land.

About the Swachh Survekshan Awards

• Launched: 2016 by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA).

• Objective: To assess urban sanitation, encourage healthy competition among cities and improve waste management and sanitation services.

• Edition: 10th edition (2025–26).

• Theme: Swachhata Ki Nayi Pehel – Badhayein Haath, Karein Safai Saath.

• Assessment Framework:

• ULBs were assessed across 43 indicators covering 10 major assessment areas.
• The assessment carried a total of 12,500 marks: 10,500 marks for on-ground assessment, including citizen feedback, and 2,000 marks for certification (ODF/ODF+/ODF++/Water+ and Garbage Free Cities).
• More than 3,000 trained assessors conducted field evaluations supported by real-time GPS-enabled monitoring.
• Key new features included increased weightage to citizen feedback, separate assessment matrices for coastal areas, expansion of Ganga Towns to River Towns, indicators for preventing open defecation and open urination, cleanliness at tourist and heritage sites, and behaviour-change programmes in schools.

Swachh Shehar Jodi Initiative

• Launched: 27 September 2025 by the Union Minister for Housing and Urban Affairs.

• Objective: To promote city-to-city mentorship and peer learning, enabling high-performing cities to support cities with relatively lower cleanliness performance.

• Coverage: 70 mentor cities paired with 191 mentee cities across 33 States/UTs.

• Top Three Jodis:

• Ahmedabad (Mentor) – Sanand (Mentee).
• Indore (Mentor) – Depalpur (Mentee).
• Tirupati (Mentor) – Kuppam (Mentee).

• The initiative follows the principle of Each One – Teach One, inspired by India's Guru–Shishya tradition.

Other Important Initiatives and Developments

• Urban Waste Processing: Increased from 16% in 2014 to 80%.

• Door-to-Door Collection: Coverage increased from 44% to over 96%.

• Legacy Waste Dumpsites: Remediation has freed nearly 11,000 acres of urban land for productive use.

• PRAGATI-50: Aims to develop 50 cities as Model Clean Cities through technology-driven interventions and continuous monitoring.

• Swachhata Hi Seva 2026: Nearly 2.10 crore citizens participated.

• SafaiMitras: Around 17 lakh sanitation workers benefited through more than 33,000 special camps.

• Gyan Yatras: Nearly 4 lakh children participated in cleanliness awareness activities.