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Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) Secretary, Durga Shanker Mishra, launched the field assessment of Swachh Survekshan 2021 today, in a web event in New Delhi. This is the sixth edition of the annual cleanliness survey conducted by the Government of India. Swachh Survekshan is a competitive framework to encourage cities to improve the status of urban sanitation while encouraging large scale citizen participation.

Addressing the webinar, Mishra said, “Swachh Survekshan has led to a spirit of healthy competition among cities and towns of India. The journey that started in 2016 with only 73 cities with a million plus population has grown manifold, with 434 cities in 2017, 4,203 cities in 2018, 4,237 cities in 2019 and 4,242 cities in Swachh Survekshan 2020, including 62 Cantonment Boards. Cities have been regularly filling in their data, updating their progress in the MIS along with running several citizen-centric campaigns in preparation of Swachh Survekshan 2021. Today, we are happy to formally kick off the survey as more than 2,000 assessors get ready to go on the field to assess the performance of the cities”.

The assessment for the Swachh Surveksha 2021 will be done from March 1-28. Owing to the COVID pandemic, it got delayed this year as the assessments are generally carried out from January 4-31 every year. The Swachh Survekshan framework is redesigned innovatively every year to ensure that the process becomes more robust. Keeping in mind the Ministry’s efforts towards ensuring the sustainability of the sanitation value chain, the SS 2021 indicators focus on parameters pertaining to wastewater treatment and reuse along with faecal sludge management. Similarly, the crucial issues of legacy waste management and remediation of landfills have also been brought to the fore in this edition of Survekshan.

Also Read: Housing For All: A Dream Turning to Reality

Since its launch in 2014, Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban (SBM-U) has made significant progress in the area of both sanitation and solid waste management. 4360 Urban ULBs have been declared ODF, 2158 cities certified ODF+ and 551 cities certified ODF++.  Moreover, 66 lakh individual household toilets and over six lakh community/ public toilets have been constructed/ or are under construction. Additionally, nearly 60,000 toilets across 2900+ cities have been made live on Google Maps. In the area of solid waste management, 97 per cent of wards have 100 per cent door-to door collection while 68 per cent of the total waste generated is being processed. A total of six cities have been certified as five star, 86 as three star and 65 as one star under the star Rating Protocol for Garbage Free Cities.

Finance Minister, Nirmala Sitharaman, announced the second phase of SBM-U for a period of five years from 2021 to 2026. This phase will focus extensively on aspects of sustainable sanitation including faecal sludge and wastewater management, along with holistic solid waste management with a focus on curbing and ultimately eliminating the use of single-use plastic (SUP), reducing air pollution through effective management of construction & demolition waste, and reducing soil pollution through remediation of legacy dumpsites.

(With inputs from PIB)

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