Star rating of Garbage Free Cities: Know India's 3-star and 5-star cities

On Tuesday, Minister of State (I/C) for Housing and Urban Affairs informed that for the assessment year 2019-2020, a total of six cities have been certified as 5-Star (Ambikapur, Rajkot, Surat, Mysuru, Indore and Navi Mumbai), 65 cities as 3-Star and 70 cities as 1-Star.

New Delhi: Ministry of Housing & Urban Affairs (MOHUA) announced the results of the Star Rating of Garbage Free Cities on Tuesday.

Hardeep Singh Puri, Minister of State (I/C) for Housing and Urban Affairs, informed that for the assessment year 2019-2020, a total of six cities have been certified as 5-Star (Ambikapur, Rajkot, Surat, Mysuru, Indore and Navi Mumbai), 65 cities as 3-Star and 70 cities as 1-Star.

• Very happy to announce the results of Star Rating of Garbage Free Cities.
  
  The Star Rating Protocol was launched in 2018 to institutionalize a mechanism for cities to achieve Garbage Free status & achieve higher degrees of cleanliness. @PMOIndia @PIB_India @SwachhBharatGov pic.twitter.com/jRCLiLRf9b

  — Hardeep Singh Puri (@HardeepSPuri) May 19, 2020 " class="align-text-top noRightClick twitterSection" data="

  Very happy to announce the results of Star Rating of Garbage Free Cities.
  
  The Star Rating Protocol was launched in 2018 to institutionalize a mechanism for cities to achieve Garbage Free status & achieve higher degrees of cleanliness. @PMOIndia @PIB_India @SwachhBharatGov pic.twitter.com/jRCLiLRf9b

  — Hardeep Singh Puri (@HardeepSPuri) May 19, 2020

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  Very happy to announce the results of Star Rating of Garbage Free Cities.
  
  The Star Rating Protocol was launched in 2018 to institutionalize a mechanism for cities to achieve Garbage Free status & achieve higher degrees of cleanliness. @PMOIndia @PIB_India @SwachhBharatGov pic.twitter.com/jRCLiLRf9b

  — Hardeep Singh Puri (@HardeepSPuri) May 19, 2020

Puri also launched the revised protocol for the Star Rating of Garbage Free Cities at the event.

In the recent phase of Star Rating Assessment, 1435 cities applied.

During the assessments, 1.19 crore citizen feedbacks and over 10 lakh geo-tagged pictures were collected and 5175 solid waste processing plants were visited by 1210 field assessors.

While 698 cities cleared the desktop assessment, 141 cities have been certified with Star Rating during field assessment. The low number of certifications signifies the rigorous and robust certification mechanism of the protocol.

Addressing the media, Puri said, “The importance of sanitation and effective solid waste management has been brought to the forefront now due to the COVID crisis. In fact, it would not be an exaggeration to say that the present situation could have been much worse had it not been for the critical part that SBM-U has played in the last five years to ensure a high degree of cleanliness and sanitation in urban areas."

"Five years ago, we introduced Swachh Survekshan (SS), the annual cleanliness survey for urban India that has proven immensely successful when it comes to improving urban cleanliness through a spirit of healthy competition. However, since it is a ranking system, several of our cities, despite doing exceptionally well, were not being recognized appropriately. The Ministry, therefore, devised the Star Rating Protocol for Garbage Free Cities - a comprehensive framework similar to our examination systems where each ward in every city must achieve a certain standard across 24 different components of solid waste management (SWM) and is graded based on overall marks received,” continued Puri.

The protocol has been devised in a holistic manner including components such as the cleanliness of drains & water bodies, plastic waste management, managing construction & demolition waste, etc. which are critical drivers for achieving garbage-free cities.

While the key thrust of this protocol is on SWM, it also takes care of ensuring certain minimum standards of sanitation through a set of prerequisites defined in the framework.