The Central Government on Tuesday, May 19, released a rating of cities for their garbage management, giving the top ‘five-star garbage-free’ rating to six cities including Maharashtra’s Navi Mumbai and Madhya Pradesh’s Indore. Gujarat’s Surat and Rajkot, Karnataka’s Mysore and Ambikapur in Chhattisgarh have also been rated 5-star.

The results were announced by Hardeep Puri, the Union Minister for Housing and Urban Affairs. Of a total of 141 cities rated, 6 cities have been graded 5-star, 65 Cities rated 3-Star and 70 Cities rated 1-Star.

New Delhi, Haryana’s Karnal, Gujarat’s Ahmedabad, Andhra Pradesh’s Tirupati and Vijayawada, MP’s Bhopal; and Jharkhand’s Jamshedpur are among ‘3-star garbage-free rating’. Meanwhile, Delhi Cantonment, Rohtak (Haryana); MP’s Gwalior, Maheshwar, Khandwa, Badnawar and Hathod, and Gujarat’s Vadodara, Bhavnagar and Vyara are among the ‘one-star-garbage-free rating’.

Speaking to the media, Puri said that the coronavirus crisis has highlighted the importance of sanitisation along with solid waste management.

‘I am absolutely sure that we benefitted a lot (due to Swachh Bharat Mission) in dealing with COVID-19,’ he said.

The Star Rating Protocol was launched by the Ministry in January 2018 to institutionalize a mechanism for cities to achieve garbage free status and to motivate cities to achieve higher degrees of cleanliness.

‘Five years ago, we introduced Swachh Survekshan (SS), the annual cleanliness survey for urban India that has proven immensely successful. However, since it is a ranking system, several of our cities, despite doing exceptionally well, were not being recognized appropriately. The Ministry, therefore, devised the Star Rating Protocol for Garbage Free Cities – a comprehensive framework where each ward in every city must achieve a certain standard across 24 different components of solid waste management (SWM) and is graded based on overall marks received,’ Puri told media.

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