Mumbai India's cleanest capital, Navi Mumbai best in waste-management: Survey
The Swachh Survekshan-2018 results released yesterday bring good news for Maharashtra. Its capital Mumbai is the cleanest state capital as per the survey, while Navi Mumbai has the country's best solid waste management system, among cities with a population of over 10L. Further, Nagpur grabbed top-spot in 'Innovation & Best Practices' category. The survey took feedback of 37.66L citizens across 4,203 municipality areas countrywide.
BMC glad with rank; activists and residents raise doubts
Last year when Mumbai ranked 29th, BMC started taking steps to improve the performance. "Increase in the number of toilets, door-to-door garbage collection in slums, closure of open garbage dumps and garbage segregation and treatment helped us grab the position this time," said BMC commissioner Ajoy Mehta. However, activists and residents raised doubts on the result and the methodology followed to ascertain the winners.
Ask us before terming Mumbai clean, say Deonar residents
Milind Mhaske of Praja Foundation wondered how Mumbai bagged this honor, if Bhopal and Chandigarh, also state capitals, have been ranked second and third cleanest cities in the survey. While a resident, who stays near Deonar dumping ground, said "ask us before terming Mumbai clean."
Nagpur: Mayor says lack of waste-segregation pulled city down
Meanwhile, Nagpur, scored full-marks in the 'Innovation & Best Practices' category. This comes after former municipal commissioner Ashwin Mudgal started providing GPS-enabled watches to sanitary workers. He also instructed NMC to build 1,000 public toilets. Although officials hoped to see Nagpur in top-20, Mayor Nanda Jichkar reasons it couldn't, because of lack of waste-segregation. "Next year, it'll score better. We'll start bio-mining," she said.
How this year's survey differs from previous editions?
This year's survey has double the marks than last year's. In 2017, the total marks was 2000; this year, it was 4000. Secondly, citizen feedback was given more weightage than direct observation. Lastly, a new category: Innovation and Creative methods carrying 5% weightage, was included.
