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Ahmedabad, Bhopal, Lucknow cleanest cities under new ranking system; Indore moved to 'Super Swachh League'
Indore, Surat, Navi Mumbai have entered the premier Super Swachh League
Ahmedabad was declared the cleanest city in the one-million population category in the Swachh Survekshan 2024-25 Awards, announced on Thursday, followed by Bhopal, Lucknow, Raipur, and Jabalpur.
Indore, which has been the cleanest city in this category for the past seven years, has been elevated to the Super Swachh League (SSL) cities along with Surat (last year’s joint topper), Navi Mumbai (last year’s second), and Vijayawada, another consistent top performer in the million-population category.
Ahmedabad secured 12,079 points out of a total of 12,500; runner-ups Bhopal and Lucknow received 12,067 and 12,001 points.
In contrast, the Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD), secured 7,920 points out of 12,500 (and the 31st rank), while Mumbai managed the 33rd rank with a score of 7,419 points.
Bengaluru and Chennai, which ranked 36th and 38th, were awarded 6,842 points and 6,822 points, respectively.
Hyderabad (11,805 points), Pimpri Chinchwad (11,782 points), and Pune (11,653 points) performed better, securing the sixth, seventh, and eighth positions, respectively.
Housing and urban affairs minister Manohar Lal Khattar said the Centre would come up with an accelerated dumpsite remediation programme to help cities. “This one-year special programme starting from Aug 15, 2025, will not only help fast-track legacy waste remediation and unlock massive urban space, but also push the scientific waste processing capacity,” he said.
He also announced launch of Swachh City Partnership initiative, where 78 top-performing cities would mentor one poor-performing city each from the respective states, following the principle of “each one, teach one”.
Apart from Indore and Surat, Chandigarh, Noida, Ujjain, Gandhinagar, Guntur and Mysuru have elevated to the Super Swachh League (SSL) in the 3 lakh-10 lakh population category.
Similarly, in the 50,000-300,000 population category, the New Delhi Municipal Council, Ambikpaur, Lonavla and Tirupati were selected for SSL. This SSL features cities that have ranked in the top three at least once in the last three years and remain in the top 20% of their respective population category in the current year.
President Droupadi Murmu conferred the awards at a function in Vigyan Bhavan in Delhi on Thursday.
The awards ceremony has been an annual feature since 2016, organised under the Centre’s Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban and is described by the government as the world’s largest urban sanitation and cleanliness survey.
Officials said the awards covered 4,500 cities, as compared to the 2016 exercise that covered only 73 urban local bodies.
Kolkata was not ranked among the top 40 cities in its category and its report card was not available on the dashboard.
West Bengal got only one single mention this time in the awards; Baidyabati, a municipality in Hooghly district, was named as a promising city.
However, report cards from Bengal and Tripura were not available on the award’s online dashboard.
