Union Minister Hardeep Singh Puri launched the ‘Swachh Survekshan 2021’ — the sixth edition of the annual cleanliness survey — and said the exercise this year will focus on wastewater treatment and other parameters.

According to the housing and urban affairs ministry, state ranking will also be announced under the survey, to be measured based on their fund utilisation and support to respective local bodies, among others.

At the event, Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Puri said that every year, the ‘Swachh Survekshan’ is redesigned innovatively to ensure the process becomes more robust with focus on sustaining the behaviour change.

“Like in the last year, keeping in mind the ministry’s efforts towards ensuring sustainability of the sanitation value chain, the SS 2021 indicators focus on parameters pertaining to waste water treatment and reuse along with faecal sludge,” he said. 

Swachh Survekshan

The ministry of housing and urban affairs (MoHUA) first conducted the ‘Swachh Survekshan’ survey in 2016 for the rating of 73 cities, followed by ‘Swachh Survekshan-2017’ conducted in January-February 2017 ranking 434 cities.

The third round of Swachh Survekshan in 2018 was a quantum leap of scale. It was conducted across 4,203 cities in 66 days, and became the largest ever pan India sanitation survey in the world. 

The fourth edition covered 4,237 cities in a record time of 28 days and was a fully digitised paperless survey.

Swachh Survekshan 2020 continued the momentum and saw an unprecedented participation of 1.87 crore citizens. 

While SS 2016 had seen Mysuru emerge as the cleanest city in India, Indore has retained the title of the cleanest city in the last four years. 

New category of awards

The minister also announced a new category of awards titled ‘Prerak Daaur Samman’ as part of SS 2021. 

The Prerak Daaur Samman has five additional sub-categories: Divya (platinum), Anupam (gold), Ujjwal (silver), Udit (bronze), Aarohi (aspiring)  — with top three cities being recognised in each.

The survey will categorise cities on the basis of six indicator-wise performance criteria:

* Segregation of waste into wet, dry and hazard categories.

* Processing capacity against wet waste generated.

* Processing and recycling of wet and dry waste.

* Construction and demolition (C&D) waste processing.

* Percentage of waste going to landfills.

* Sanitation status of cities.

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