Durga Shanker Mishra, Secretary, Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), launched field assessment of Swachh Survekshan (SS) 2021, the sixth edition of the annual cleanliness survey, at a web event in New Delhi on March 1.
SS was introduced by MoHUA in 2016 as a competitive framework to encourage cities to improve the status of urban sanitation while encouraging large-scale citizen participation.
Speaking at the webinar, Mishra said, “SS has led to a spirit of healthy competition among cities and towns of India. The journey that started in 2016 with only 73 cities with million plus population has grown manifold, with 434 cities in 2017, 4,203 cities in 2018, 4,237 cities in 2019 and 4,242 cities in SS 2020, including 62 Cantonment Boards.”
He said cities have been regularly filling in their data, updating their progress besides running several citizen-centric campaigns in preparation of SS 2021. “Today, we are happy to formally kick off the survey as more than 2,000 assessors get ready to go on the field to assess the performance of cities,” he said.
Every year, the on-field assessment takes place between January 4 and January 31. However, it was delayed this year by two months due to COVID pandemic. It will now be conducted between March 1 and March 28.
