Swachh Survekshan 2023: Field surveys of cities’ cleanliness begins, to culminate in 2023 rankings

Kicking off the field assessment, Housing and Urban Affairs Secretary Manoj Joshi said on Monday, “We continue to make efforts to make Swachh Survekshan easier and useful for smaller and medium size cities so that it continues to be a management tool for improvement in sanitation.”

Swachh Survekshan 2023 is the eighth annual edition of the ranking released by the Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry. Last year, Indore retained the top spot, having won the distinction of being the cleanest city in India for the sixth year in a row.

Writing to all states on June 21, Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban Director Roopa Mishra said assessors would visit the cities to carry out an independent validation of the progress claimed by the cities as well as observe the situation themselves and collect citizens’ feedback.

While the 2022 rankings covered 4,354 cities, the number of cities to be covered this year was yet to be decided. However, the letter said all urban local bodies formed on or before December 31, 2021 would be assessed and for those created after that, they may be included after making a request to the Ministry.

The cities will be marked out of a total 9,500 marks, of which 53 percent is service level progress, 26 percent certification and 23 percent citizens’ feedback. Within service level progress, 40 percent of the marks will be for processing and disposal of waste, 33 percent for segregated collection and 27 percent for used water management and protection of sanitation workers.

Among the questions to be posed to citizens are if waste is collected daily from their homes, if they given segregated waste to the collector, if they find their neighbourhood clean and if they know they can search for their nearest public toilet on Google.