The ‘Queen of Hills’, Shimla, the capital city of Himachal Pradesh, has bettered its past record and jumped 63 notches to rank 65th cleanest city among the 4,242 cities in the country in Swachh Survekashan 2020.

Shimla with a population of 1.69 lakh has been adjudged cleanest among the 54 Urban Local bodies in the state and no other town of Himachal Pradesh figured in top 100 list of cleanest cities in the country.

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Shimla had scored a total of 3,695.03 points out of the total 6,000 points in Swachh Survekshan whose results were declared today by Union Housing and Urban Affairs minister Hardeep Singh Puri and a total 3.514 citizens had participated in the survey.

It is worthwhile to mention here that Shimla was ranked 128th in 2019 survey wherein the hill city had scored 2,689 points out of the total 5,000 points.

The capital city of Himachal had performed better this year in three of the four Swachh Survekshan components, Service Level Progress (SLP) 1,214.87 points, Certification with 500 points and Citizen Feedback 1,049.

In 2019 survey, the city had got 478.19 points in SLP, 25 in Certification and 1,010.3 in Citizen Feedback benchmark.

However, the city’s performance in Direct Observation had dipped to 930.64 as compared to last year’s score of 1176 on the parameter.

Overall, Himachal among the states with less than 100 Urban Local Bodies, had ranked on 6th position as compared to 20th position in 2019 survey but the states were not categorised on the number of ULBs at that time.

In the category, Jharkhand had ranked first while Indore in Madhya Pradesh had ranked cleanest city in the country for fourth consecutive year.

In the 2020 Swachh Survekashan, the ranking of towns with population less than 1 lakh had been done zone-wise and no towns of Himachal with population between 25 to 50,000 had figured in top 100 list.

Nahan town had ranked 147, Solan 159, Mandi 172, Baddi 185 and Paonta Sahib at 187 while towns with less than 25,000, Manali had ranked 477, Palampur 533 and Dharamshala, the winter capital of Himachal Pradesh, had ranked lowest at 629 position.

In Swachh Survekashan ranking for cantonment boards, Dalhousie cantonment area in Chamba district ranked 9th and it had replaced Jutogh cantonment area in Shimla district in top 10 rankings.

Jutogh cantonment area was ranked at 3rd place in in 2019 survey but this year, the area slipped 15 places to 18th position. Last year, Jutogh had scored 2,796 points as compared to 2611 points in 2020.

Among other cantonment boards, Dagshai cantonment area in Solan had been ranked 44th, Subathu at 49th, Bakloh at 51st, Kauali at 56th and Yol at 58th position.