Kalyan Barooah
NEW DELHI, May 11 – All tall claims of turning Guwahati, gateway to the North-east, into a clean and green city have fallen flat on the face, with the urban metropolis being ranked 59th in the rating of cities under the National Urban Sanitation Policy, announced on Monday.
Guwahati city has scored 43.310 marks and is below Shillong and Agartala, which have been ranked 18th and 44th respectively. Chandigarh has emerged the best city to live in and is ranked number 1 with 73.480 points. However, none of the Indian cities have
qualified for the green categories.

Based on the scores for output, process and outcome indicators, cities were classified under four colour categories: red, black, blue and green. None of the cities of the north eastern region made to the blue category.

Nagaon town is the only urban city in the North-east, which was under the red category with 28.716 marks and ranked 305. Silchar in Barak Valley fared a little better scoring 34.220 points and was ranked 217.

Jorhat has been given 41.659 points, while Dibrugarh and Tinsukia were ranked 162nd and 164th with 37.300 and 37.126 points respectively.

The exercise of rating of cities covered all major cities of the country and almost 72 per cent of India’s total urban

population. The country was divided into five zones for the purpose- North; South; West; East and North East and Central and South Central.

Each city has been scored on 19 indicators, which are divided into three categories: Output (50 points), Process (30 points) and Outcome (20 points). Therating makes use of both primary data collection during field visits and secondary data from published sources such as census.

The rating of cities creates a baseline, which can be used to measure progress in respect of sanitation in the cities and is expected to encourage cities to perform better in years to come. Based on the results of the rating, the best performers will be recognised with a National Award- ‘The Nirmal Shahar Puruskar’.

Releasing the ratings, Union Urban Development Minister, S Jaipal Reddy noted that there are a number of cities that could easily cross the red category. The number of such cities is about 60.

There are four cities that are already in the blue category. These are Chandigarh, Surat, NDMC and Mysore.

Reddy said that he would write to all the Chief Ministers to prioritise sanitation. He expressed the hope that the ratings today would indeed mobilize all stakeholders to prioritise and take action for improvingsanitation.