Cleanliness assessment of India's cities, towns

Asserting that Swachh Bharat Mission had become a people’s movement, Minister of State for Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri launched the Swachh Sarvekshan League 2020, a quarterly cleanliness assessment of cities and towns in India. This will be integrated with Swachh Sarvekshan 2020, the fifth edition of the annual cleanliness survey of urban India to be conducted from January to February 2020.

The league has been launched with the aim of sustaining the on-ground performance of cities along with continuous monitoring of service level performance in cleanliness. It will be conducted in three quarters; April- June, July-September and October-December 2019.

"It will have a weightage of 2000 marks for each quarter, which will be evaluated on the basis of monthly updation of Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban) by the cities. Along with this, outbound calls will be made to the citizens to validate the claims made by the cities on 12 service level progress indicators. These two parameters will determine the quarterly ranking of cities.

The ranks will be assigned in two categories - cities with a population of one lakh and above and those with population of less than 1 lakh. The exercise will cover all ULBs that have come into existence on or before 31 December 2018. "The ranking of the cities will encourage healthy competition between the cities," he said.