Cleanest City: Mysuru slips to 8th position

Image: Flickr/mbell1975

Hunsur wins Best City Award in Solid Waste Management

New Delhi/ Mysuru: For all those of you who are thinking that Mysuru will regain the top spot in the Cleanest City Ranking, here is a shocker. The Heritage City of Mysuru has slipped into eighth position in the Swachh Survekshan 2018.

Last year (2017), Mysuru was in the fifth position. The rankings were released in New Delhi yesterday by the Union Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs.

In 2014 and 2015, Mysuru had won the India’s Cleanest City Award consecutively and had got global recognition.

Like last year, Indore has regained the top spot and has remained India’s Cleanest City. Last year, Indore, Bhopal, Visakhapatnam and Surat were ahead of Mysuru and this year, Indore (first), Bhopal (second), Chandigarh (third), New Delhi (fourth), Vijayawada (fifth), Tirupati (sixth), and Vishakhapatnam (seventh) have beaten Mysuru and as such our city has to be satisfied with the eighth spot.

The only solace for Mysuru is that the city has been awarded the title of ‘Cleanest Medium City’, in the 3-10 lakh population category.

Of the 485 cities with over one lakh population that figured in the list, Bengaluru stands 216th this year as against 210th in 2017.

In terms of State rankings, Karnataka stands 14th behind Andhra Pradesh that stands 5th, Telangana that stands 7th and Tamil Nadu that stands in 13th position.

The Swachh Survekshan exercise, part of Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet project Swachh Bharat Mission, was conducted between January 4 and March 10. The exercise was aimed at bringing in a spirit of healthy competition among cities to becoming clean cities. On its part, the Mysuru City Corporation (MCC) too had initiated several measures to regain the top place but failed.

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According to the Ministry, the parameters included segregation and processing of waste at source, sanitation, open-defecation-free status, financial sustainability of local bodies and adoption of innovations and best practices. The survey was done by direct observation and citizen feedback, apart from monitoring progress in terms of service levels.

Hunsur Best City in Solid Waste Management

Periyapatna comes second in the Zonal Ranking South Zone and Hunsur has bagged the fourth place. Hunsur won the South Zone Award for Best City in Solid Waste Management (SWM). It scored 280 out of 476 marks in the SWM indicators which include segregation of waste in a majority of Wards.

Speaking to Star of Mysore this morning, Parvathi Devi, the Swachh Survekshan Nodal Officer, who is also the Executive Officer of Hunsur City Municipal Council, said that Hunsur collects about 21.9 tonnes per day. “We have adopted many efficient methods of solid waste management like segregation of wet and dry waste, transporting waste collected for processing on the same day, transforming garbage vulnerable points, developing a landfill and setting up a large number of wet waste plants,” she said.

Hunsur, which has a population of more than one lakh, has an efficient door-to-door garbage collection system. All the wet waste is transported by vehicles and dry waste into polythene bags attached to each transportation vehicle.

“We are yet to implement the door-to-door wet and dry waste segregation fully in all Wards though we do it near our landfills. The award motivates us to carry out the works in vigorous way,” she added.