Shimla, touted as a Queen of Hill Stations, is ranked at 27th position in the ‘Swachh Survekshan-2016’ survey in the country. A total of 73 cities were surveyed for cleanliness, but Shimla which is usually known for its natural beauty has failed to find position among the top 15 cities in the country.
Here is a list of cities
1.Mysuru
2.Chadigarh
3.Tiruchirapalli
4.New Delhi Municipal council
5.Visakhapatnam
6.Surat
7.Rajkot
8.Gangtok
9.Pimprichindwad
10.Greater Mumbai
11.Pune
12.Navi Mumabi
13.Vadodara
14.Ahmedabad
15.Imphal
16.Panaji
17.Thane
18.Coimattore
19.Hyderabad
20.Nagpur
21.Bhopal
22.Allahabad
23.Vijayawada
24.Bhubaneswar
25.Indore
26.Madurai
27.Shimla
28.Lucknow
29.Jaipur
30.Gwalior
31.Nashik
32.Warangal
33.Agartala
34.Ludhiana
35.Vasai-Virar
36.Chennai
37.Gurgaon
38.Bengaluru
39.South Muncipal Corporation of Delhi
40.Thiruvananthapuram
41.Aizawl
42.Gandhinagar
43.North MCD
44.Kozhikode
45.Kanpur
46.Durg
47.Agra
48.Srinagar
49.Amritsar
50.Guwahati
51.Faridabad
52.East MCD
53.Shillong
54.Hubbali-Dharwad (Karnataka)
55.Kochi
56.Aurangabad
57.Jodhpur
58.Kota
59.Cuttack
60.Kohima
61.Dehradun
62.Ranchi
63.Jabalpur
64.Kalyan Dombivili (Maharashtra)
65.Varanasi
66.Jamshedpur
67.Ghaziabad
68.Raipur
69.Meerut
70.Patna
71.Itanagar
72.Asansol
73.Dhanbad.
Quality Council of India, which conducted the survey deployed 25 teams of 3 trained surveyors each to visit 42 locations in each city covering major zones like railway stations, bus stations, religious places, major market places, planned and unplanned residential areas including slums and toilet complexes. The survey teams took a total of 3,066 geo-tagged photos of places visited as evidence and they were uploaded on website today.
Minister of Urban Development M. Venkaiah Naidu said all the 73 cities were informed sufficiently in advance so as to make available documentary evidence of their efforts towards improving sanitation and for verification by survey teams. Over one lakh citizens responded with their feedback on cleanliness in respective cities making the survey of 2016 evidence based and participatory.
Lakhs of tourists, domestic and international, visit Shimla every year to witness its natural beauty and evade the scorching sun of the summer, but this ranking proving that Shimla losing its sheen and pride.
Shimla MC, established in 1851 – is one of the oldest municipality in the country, but for the past one year it has found it hard to keep the city clean. Piles of garbage are a regular feature in the city. However, public representatives are busy accusing each other for the mess.
The IPH Dept. and Shimla MC have also failed in providing clean water to the taxpayers of the cities. Thousands of citizens have suffered from jaundice because IPH Dept. supplied untreated sewer water in the city. The authorities are still proing who is responsible for the mistake. Responsible departments claim that they have been taking strong steps, but the truth is that jaundice is still spreading.
