Vizag falls short in maintaining its Swachh Bharat ranking

Contrary to the expectations and much to the disappointment of the denizens of the city, port city Vizag has failed to maintain its ranking in the Swachh Survekshan for 2018. While there were widespread hopes that the city would improve its 3rd rank from last year and bag the top spot, the recently revealed data has proved otherwise.

The rankings of Swachh Survekshan 2018, which were announced on Wednesday night, saw Indore, Bhopal, and Chandigarh emerge as the top 3 cleanest cities of India. Vizag, on the other hand, has failed to bag a merit in any of the 23 categories announced by the Union Ministry for Housing and Urban Affairs.

While state’s Vijayawada stood as the cleanest city in the one million population category, Tirupati won the best city award in the solid waste management category.

The past one year saw the GVMC officials take up multiple initiatives and programmes to make Vizag cleaner and create awareness among the citizens. The civic body put into action an aggressive campaign that saw the Swachhta mission promoted through various ads as well.

With only the first three rankings being announced, the officials hope that the city would stand at least among the top 5 cleanest cities in the country.

While Vizag stood 205th in the ranking announced in 2015, it took major strides eventually to stand 5th and 3rd in the 2016 and 2017 rankings respectively.

Swachh Bharat was a mission flagged off by Prime Minister Narendra Modi with an aim of promoting cleanliness and hygiene in the country. Swacch Survekshan is a survey conducted every year which assesses the feedback of the citizens and concerned authorities to declare India’s cleanest city.