Authorities irked by ‘Cleanest Medium City’ tag

Mysuru: The ‘Cleanest Medium City’ tag given to Mysuru city, under the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, has irritated officials of the MCC who have questioned the basis on which the rankings were accorded. They have sought a clarification from the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA). Mysuru was given the ‘cleanst city’ tag among urban conglomerations with a population between 3 lakh and 1 million. Mysuru was awarded as the cleanest city in India in 2015 and 2016, but slid down to the 5^th spot in 2017.

The local authorities are miffed that the MoHUA has listed Indore, Bhopal and Chandigarh as the ‘Top 3 cleanest cities’ at the national level while Mysuru was just mentioned as the cleanest medium city. The overall national ranking of the city is not mentioned. The officials feel that such a tag takes the focus away from the national ranking of cities in cleanliness, because the awards have been given under 52 categories this year.

Capital cities and those with population above one lakh have been ranked at the national level and those with population less than one lakh have been ranked at zonal levels- North, South, East, West and North East. The MoHUA said that the categories were introduced to give a fair and level playing field to the cities since a city like Mysuru cannot be compared to Bengaluru or Chennai, with respect to the population. While the MCC officials agree with this, they claim that those cities have better infrastructure and higher budget allocation. They opine that such an overall national ranking should be available to Mysuru as well. They even suspect the role of certain political powers and clashes in the introduction of various categories.