AP City Tops Super Swachh List, Check Where Hyderabad Stands

Vijayawada is making strides in development. The elevation to a newly formed ‘Super Swachh League Cities’ is another feather in the cap for the cultural city in Andhra Pradesh. The category has been created in the Swachh Survekshan to include cities demonstrating exceptional performance in sanitation and Vijayawada has clinched a position in the list.

In another proud achievement, the city also secured third position as a non-metro employment hub in the list of 10 employable cities across the country, released by LinkedIn. Vijayawada is also evolving an IT and business destination. Tech giants including HCL, TCS and Infosys evinced interest in investing in the city. Accordingly, the NDA government is trying to enhance the infrastructure and other facilities.

In neighbouring Telangana, Greater Hyderabad has been ranked the sixth cleanest city among more than 4,500 cities across the country. This is best-ever ranking Hyderabad has received under the Swachh Survekshan (Sanitation Survey) Rankings. Greater Hyderabad also received a seven-star rating in the Survey for its garbage-free city status, making it the first and only city in Telangana to achieve this distinction. Additionally, Hyderabad has also been re-certified as a “Water Plus” city for the fourth consecutive year. The sixth rank was given in the Million Plus Cities category, having a population of more than 10 lakh.

Meanwhile, the Secunderabad Cantonment Board ranked first among all Cantonment Boards in the country and secured 11th position in the national rankings in the medium cities category (with populations between 50,000 and 3 lakh).

On Thursday, the Centre released the annual Swachh rankings for various cities in the country. Along with Vijayawada, Indore, Surat, Navi Mumbai have also been elevated as Super Swachh League cities. In a bid to promote new cities to follow sanitation rules and emerge as clean cities, the government introduced Swachh Shahar category under which Ahmedabad was named the cleanest big city followed by Bhopal and Lucknow.

Over 14 crore people participated in the survey through face-to-face interactions, the Swachhata App, MyGov and social media platforms in over 4,500 cities.

The Centre presented over 78 awards this year across four categories — Super Swachh League Cities; Top three clean cities in five population categories; Special Category: Ganga Towns, Cantonment Boards, SafaiMitra Suraksha, Mahakumbh; and State-level awards — Promising clean city of a state or Union Territory.

Under the new category ‘Super Swachh League’, while Noida emerged the cleanest city in the Super Swachh League, Chandigarh and Mysore secured the following ranks in the 3-10 lakh population category. The cleanest cities have set new parameters in cleanliness. President Droupadi Murmu gave away the awards to the winners at an event which was attended by Union Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Manohar Lal and others.