Swachh Survekshan awards 2019: Mysuru third cleanest city in India; Bengaluru at 194th spot
The Swachh Survekshan awards 2019 were conferred by President Ram Nath Kovind at a ceremony. Bengaluru was at the 214th place in 2018 has left behind 20 cities and has been placed in the 194th position this year
FollowNew Delhi: Indore was declared the cleanest city in India for the third straight year in the Central government's cleanliness survey announced on Wednesday. The second and third positions in the category were grabbed by Ambikapur in Chhattisgarh and Mysuru in Karnataka. Bengaluru is in the 194th position.
Mysuru has moved from eighth rank in 2018 to third this year. In 2015, Bengaluru was in the seventh position, but slipped badly to 214th place in 2018. Currently, it has left behind 20 cities to be in the 194th position this  year. The main reason for Bengaluru to be farthest from being clean city is the prevalence of open defecation and the garbage menace in the city.Â
Meanwhile, another prominent city in Karnataka, Mangaluru is in the 165th position.
A total of 458 cities with a minimum of 10 lakh population were considered for the survey. State-wise, Karnataka is in the 14th position, ahead of Kerala that is in the 21st position. Other south Indian states, Andhra Pradesh is in the sixth position, Telangana in eighth and Tamil Nadu in 12th position.
The Swachh Survekshan awards 2019 were conferred by President Ram Nath Kovind at a ceremony in New Delhi.
While the New Delhi Municipal Council area was given the 'Cleanest Small City' award, Uttarakhand's Gauchar was adjudged the 'Best Ganga Town' in the central government survey.
The 'Cleanest Big City' award has been bagged by Ahmedabad, while Raipur is the 'Fastest Moving Big City'.
Ujjain has been the adjudged the 'Cleanest Medium City' and Mathura-Vrindavan bagged the tag of the 'Fastest Moving Medium Cities'.
Top-ranked cities received a statue of Mahatma Gandhi as a memento for their work towards cleanliness. Swachh Survekshan 2019 covered all urban local bodies in the country, making it the largest such cleanliness survey in the world.
President Kovind said there is a need to include cleanliness in the curriculum of schools and higher educational institutions.
Union Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said the urban transformation that is being attempted in the country is the most comprehensive and ambitious framework of planned urbanisation.
"The fact that urban sanitation had never before been brought to the centre-stage spoke of the common perception that cleaning urban India was an impossible task. These states and cities have risen to that challenge," Puri said.
* With inputs from PTI
