Rajkot ranked sixth in cleanliness survey

The central government declared the list of cities on the basis of cleanliness survey for the year 2020. Among the four cities of Gujarat which figure among the top ten in the list, Rajkot has been ranked sixth. However, the residents of Rajkot city are amused by the ranking because during the monsoon the city is pockmarked by ditches and heaps of filth.

Rajkot: The central government has recently announced the list of clean cities which figure in the 2020 survey of cleanliness. Among the top ten cities, four are from Gujarat and Rajkot, considered the capital of the Saurashtra region, has been ranked sixth in the list.

Rajkot was at the seventh rank in the survey conducted in 2016, 18th in the year 2017 and 35th in the year 2018. The city figured at the 9th rank in 2019 and in the recent survey of clean cities it figured at the rank of 6th in 2020. In the survey of cities with one million or more population, Rajkot secured 5157 marks out of the total of 6,000.

Citizens are surprised how Rajkot secured the sixth rank among clean cities. The leader of the Opposition in the Rajkot Municipal Corporation Vashram Sagathiya lashed out at the ruling party in the city and in the state and called the Municipal Commissioner as the blue-eyed boy of the BJP.

He claimed that there are several localities of the city which are full of filth and the cleanliness drive carried out by the civic body is only on the paper. There is a huge gap between the claim and the reality, he says.

When ETV Bharat carried out a reality check there were piles of garbage in most parts of the city. Because there was heavy rain, there were puddles of water on road and vehicles were seen splashing filthy water as they drove past causing much inconvenience to the pedestrians.

However, Rajkot Mayor Binaben Acharya was all praise for the Municipal Corporation and expressed the hope that in the coming days the city would figure among the top five clean cities in the country.