Chandigarh
Chandigarh disappointed everyone by scoring 11th and 27th rank respectively in the first and second quarter of the Swachh Survekshan league 2020, results of which were declared on Tuesday. Minister of Housing & Urban Affairs (MoHUA) Hardeep Singh Puri announced the results of Swachh Survekshan League 2020 in New Delhi.
The results of the first two-quarters Q1 and Q2 (April to September 2019) were also webcast live by the NIC. In a bid to sustain the on ground performance and efforts of cities and ensure continuous monitoring of service-level progress, the MoHUA had introduced Swachh Survekhsan (SS) league 2020 on June 6, 2019. The results of Swachh Survekhsan League 2020 will be integrated with the fifth edition of ‘Swachh Survkeshan’ – the annual cleanliness survey to assess cities and towns of India on their cleanliness quotient set to be conducted from January 4, 2020.
As part of the SS league 2020, there is a quarterly cleanliness assessment of cities and towns in India. The assessment is conducted in first three quarters — April to June, July to September and October to December of 2019. Each quarter carries 2000 marks with pre-set varying weightage for the final cleanliness survey. The quarterly assessment of cities assigns ranks in three broad categories — cities with population below one lakh, cities with population between one lakh and 10 lakh and cities with population above 10 lakh. The quarterly rank of cities will play a crucial role in overall annual rankings in Swachh Survekshan 2020 because of the 25 per cent weightage given to these quarterly assessments under Swachh Survekshan League 2020.
Chandigarh has again disappointed everyone with its poor show in the results of the first two quarters. In category of above 10 lakh population cities, in which Chandigarh falls, ranking of the city has come as 27th for Q2 (July-Sep 2019) and 11th for Q1 (Apr-June, 2019). Chandigarh got 1283.25 marks in Q1 and 1141.83 marks in Q2 against the city of Indore which stood at number one rank in both the quarters by scoring 1632.72 marks and 1653 marks respectively.
Vinod Vashisht, the convener of City Forum of Residents Welfare Organisations, said, “We have analyzed the poor ranking of Chandigarh in both the quarters. Mainly it’s due to significant reduction of marks than the self-claimed marks by MCC by the third party assessing body during independent validation from citizens through phone calls. Low scoring is due to either delayed or lack of compliance with parameters such as segregation of waste at source, integration of informal waste collectors, maintenance of water bodies/drains, plastic waste/C&D/3-R compliances, faecal sludge & septage management, CSR, sanitary workers trainings and engagements of BWGs & Associations.”
In March 2019, as a shocker, Swachh Survekshan national ranking of Chandigarh had drastically fallen down to 20th rank as compared to its third rank in 2018. Chandigarh Municipal Corporation has been participating in Swachh Survekshan since its inception by the Union Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs (MoHUA). In 2016, it had secured second rank among the 73 million-plus population cities. In SS2017, the city was at the 11th rank among 434 cities of more than 1 lakh population. In 2018, Chandigarh was second runner-up (third rank) among 4,203 cities across the country.
“It’s not good news on the last day of this year, but still we hope that Chandigarh’s overall ranking would improve from its existing ranking. Q3 result of the SS League is still to come and most of the city solid waste management actions and reforms have taken place in this/last quarter (Oct-Dec 2019) only. Moreover, the weightage of Q3 in Swachh Survekshan 2020 is almost three times the sum total weightages of Q1 and Q2 quarters. We hope the MC House will learn lessons from this flop show,” Vashisht said.
