Disappointment: Vadodara among 1-star rated Garbage free cities of India

Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, Government of India announced the results of garbage-free rating for cities. The Star Rating Protocol was launched by the Ministry in January 2018 to institutionalize a mechanism for cities to achieve Garbage Free status, and to motivate cities to achieve higher degrees of cleanliness.

Vadodara received 1-star, while Surat & Rajkot got 5-star, Ahmedabad got 3-star

65 cities got 3-Star Rating & 70 cities got1-Star Rating this year

Here are the cities that got the 5-star garbage-free Ratings: 

• Ambikapur (Chhattisgarh)
• Rajkot
• Surat
• Mysore 
• Indore
• Navi Mumbai 

The protocol has been devised in a holistic manner including components such as 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.

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”.