Shimla, known as queen of hills and considered as one of the cleanest cities in India many years ago, has surprisingly slipped to 347 places in the Swachh Sarvekshan Survey- 2024-2025 conducted by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development of Government of India.
The awards for winning the top ranking in different categories, based on online surveys, were given by President of India Droupadi Murmu in a function held at Vigyan Bhawan New Delhi on Thursday.
Ahmedabad was named the cleanest big city in India, followed by Bhopal and Lucknow, in the Centre’s annual “Swachh Survekshan” cleanliness survey.
Indore, Surat, Navi Mumbai, and Vijayawada cities entered the newly introduced “Super Swachh League”, recognizing their sustained excellence in cleanliness among cities, in the “million-plus population” category.
Shimla town, which had 188 places in the national ranking of clean cities during 2023 -2024 survey, has slipped further in the national ranking this year.
Interestingly, Theog, a small town near Shimla has been ranked as the cleanest town of Himachal Pradesh under the Promising Swachh Shehar category under the survey.
While releasing the survey report the ministry of housing and Urban Development stated nearly 14 crore people participated in the survey through face-to-face interactions, the Swachhata App, MyGov and social media platforms in over 4,500 cities.
Former Mayor of Shimla Sanjay Chauhan said, “The main reason for decline in survey is acute shortage of sanitary staff, almost 70 percent posts of workers are lying vacant and now new recruitment is being done; during the 2015-16 survey Shimla was at rank 10.”
“The previous government had outsourced every service to maintain cleanliness and mechanization is not possible in hilly towns like Shimla”, Chauhan added.
Surinder Chauhan, Mayor of Shimla Municipal Corporation said, “The ranking in the survey is unfair and we are making every effort to keep Shimla clean.”
