• Longleng sees biggest improvement to top State’s score
• Overall State’s performance down 50%
• 4 towns from Nagaland feature in Bottom 10
Moa Jamir
Dimapur | October 3
The cleanliness campaign in Nagaland seems to be losing steam with the latest Swachh Survekshan 2022 highlighting decline in scores of most urban local bodies (ULBs) while the State’s overall ranking slipped from 6th to 12th.
Accordingly, Longleng Town Council (TC), which scored highest among the ULBs in Nagaland, was ranked 3953, out of 4354 town and cities assessed in the 2022 cleanliness survey.
However, the performance of Longleng is remarkable as it showed the biggest improvement over 2021, to occupy the top position in the State.
Longleng improved score by 452.14 points, from 832.97 in 2021 to 1273.11 out of a possible 7500 points. The town was ranked 12th among 19 ULBs in Nagaland in 2021.
Another ULB showing marked progress was Pfutsero, the third cleanest town in Nagaland in 2022 with a score of 1187.10. In 2021, the town was ranked 13th with 802.38 points.
Tuensang also maintained consistent improvement to better its ranking from 6th in 2021 to Nagaland’s second cleanest town in 2022. Other TCs showing improvement in scoring were Phek, Zunheboto and Tuli.
Despite improvement in 6 ULBs, the rest showed a fall in their scoring including the State’s three municipalities Kohima, Dimapur and Mokokchung. (See table)
Consequently, as per the overall scoring given in the Swachh Survekshan 2022 portal, out of 4357 ULBs in India, 4 from Nagaland were in the bottom 10, with Changtongya, Naginimora, Peren and Kiphire respectively occupying the 5th, 4th, 3rd and 2nd last positions.
Notably, apart from Longleng, Tuensang and Pfutsero, all the other ULBs featured in the bottom-200.
Overall, Naharlagun in Arunachal Pradesh occupied the last position, while Indore with a score of 7141.41 has retained the cleanest ULBs tag, followed by Surat (6924.84) and Navi Mumbai. (6852.91).
In the Northeast, Manipur’s Jiribam continued to maintain its stellar performance and ranked highest among the town/cities, with a score of 3761.12, followed by Assam’s Lakhipur (3072.94) and Sikkim’s Mangan (2807.77). In the Zonal category for North-East with population less then 15,000, the three towns occupied the top-3 position respectively.
State Ranking
With the decline in performances of the most ULBs in the State, the overall ranking of Nagaland also witnessed a sharp decline from last year.
In the rank of 14 States with less than 100 ULBs, Nagaland’s rank slipped from 6th in 2021 to 12th in 2022.
While it’s total score improved marginally from 1000 in 2021, to 1350 in 2022, others States have improved considerably.
Incidentally, while Nagaland was the ‘cleanest’ North-Eastern State in 2021 as per the score, in 2022, the State was in the lowest 3 overall, beaten to the bottom by Arunachal Pradesh and Meghalaya.
In the less than 100 ULBs category, Tripura was ranked highest, followed by Jharkhand and Uttarakhand.
Among the States with more than 100 ULBs, Madhya Pradesh was ranked first, with Chhattisgarh in the second, followed by Maharashtra.
The last three from the bottom respectively were Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Bihar.
How were the ULBs ranked?
As per the Swachh Survkeshan portal, its primary focus is to encourage large scale citizen participation and create awareness amongst all sections of society about the importance of working together towards making towns and cities better places to reside in.
The annual surveys, conducted under the ambit of Swachh Bharat Mission (Urban), mobilises people, resources and authorities in an effort to prove that their city, of all cities in India, is the cleanest and sustainable, it said.
To this end, different levels of awards for ‘Cleanest City’ have been instituted and computation is based on scores from the four evaluation areas: Service Level Progress; Direct Observation; Citizen Feedback and Certifications.
The cities/towns that have a population of more than 1 lakh, or are small state capitals and UTs are eligible for the national level awards while smaller cities (population of less than 1 lakh) are being considered for zonal awards.
The best-performing State has been evaluated based on two categories: State with >100 ULBs and States with <100 ULBs.
