Visakhapatnam, Jabalpur and Lucknow named top three big cities as President Murmu confers 60 Swachh Survekshan awards

Greater Visakhapatnam, Jabalpur and Lucknow have been named India’s top three cities among those with a population of 10 lakh or more, in the 10th Swachh Survekshan results announced on Wednesday, according to the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs. The release does not rank the three against each other.

President Droupadi Murmu presented the awards at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi on November 11, 2026. Union Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Manohar Lal and Minister of State Tokhan Sahu were present. The Department of Urban Development convened the ceremony, which handed out 60 national awards.

Who won what

The ministry’s release lists winners in seven groups. In the Super Swachh League, which is reserved for cities that have already topped earlier rankings, Navi Mumbai, Surat and Vijayawada were named. The mentor and mentee pairing prize, Swachh Shehar Jodi, went to Ahmedabad with Sanand, Indore with Depalpur, and Tirupati with Kuppam.

Among the specialised categories, Rudrapur in Uttarakhand, Jammu and Shopian in Jammu and Kashmir were named Clean Himalayan Cities. Rewa in Madhya Pradesh, Bilaspur in Chhattisgarh and Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh took the river front town awards, in that order. Puri in Odisha, Alappuzha in Kerala and Ratnagiri in Maharashtra were the Swachh Coastal Towns.

The release does not name the winners in the survey’s other four population categories, and it does not list the 30 cities given the State First Swachh City award. Union Territories were grouped into two classes, those with up to five urban local bodies and those with more than five.

What the President and the minister said

Murmu said cleanliness cannot be achieved by the efforts of any single institution alone, and stressed citizen participation and a change in everyday behaviour. She also called for plastic waste management to be built into school curricula.

Manohar Lal described the Swachh Bharat Mission as “a nationwide people’s movement”. He cited ministry figures showing that urban waste processing has risen from 16% to 80% since 2014, and that door-to-door waste collection now covers more than 96% of households, up from 44%. About 11,000 acres of land once occupied by legacy dumpsites has been freed, he said.

Satendra Singh, Secretary of the Department of Urban Development, called the day “a celebration of the outstanding efforts made by our cities and citizens in advancing the cause of cleanliness”.

How the survey grew

The survey, run by the ministry every year since 2016, began with 73 urban bodies. This edition assessed 4,751 cities on 43 indicators across 10 areas, with more than 3,000 trained assessors whose visits were tracked by GPS. About 2.70 crore citizens gave feedback, the ministry said. As we reported before the ceremony, the ministry had said the results would be announced on November 11, 2026.

The ministry also pointed to movement in the lower and middle of the table. More than 350 urban local bodies rose by over 500 ranks, and more than 1,700 cities with populations under 50,000 improved on their 2024-25 positions.

What comes next

Manohar Lal announced that 70 mentor cities have been paired with 191 mentee cities under the Swachh Shehar Jodi scheme, so that cities with good records help weaker ones. He also announced PRAGATI-50, under which 50 cities will be developed as Model Clean Cities. The release gave no timeline for either.

For residents, the ranking feeds directly into what municipal bodies are judged on: door-to-door collection, segregation at source, sanitation in public toilets and how quickly complaints are handled. The ministry also reported that about 2.10 crore people took part in this year’s Swachhata Hi Seva campaign, about 17 lakh sanitation workers (SafaiMitras) benefited through more than 33,000 special camps, and around 4 lakh children joined Gyan Yatras.