Swachh Survekshan 2025-26: Navi Mumbai tops Super Swachh League, Indore's long run ends

Navi Mumbai has been ranked first in the Super Swachh League of the Swachh Survekshan 2025-26, the Centre's annual cleanliness survey of urban India, with Surat and Vijayawada in second and third place. President Droupadi Murmu gave away the awards at Vigyan Bhawan in New Delhi on Wednesday, November 11.

The result marks a change at the top. Indore, which had been rated the country's cleanest city for eight straight years, did not take the top spot this time and was instead placed second in the new Swachh Shehar Jodi category, which pairs a large mentor city with a smaller town.

Category winners

In the Swachh Shehar Jodi category, Ahmedabad and Sanand came first, followed by Indore with Depalpur and Tirupati with Kuppam. Among cities with over 10 lakh people, Greater Visakhapatnam led, ahead of Jabalpur and Lucknow. Ujjain, Chandigarh and Guntur topped the 3-10 lakh population group, while Dewas, the New Delhi Municipal Council area and Sagar led among cities of 50,000 to 3 lakh people.

Rewa, Bilaspur and Varanasi were named the cleanest riverfront towns, Puri, Alappuzha and Ratnagiri the cleanest coastal towns, and Rudrapur, Jammu and Shopian the cleanest Himalayan cities. Thirty cities were also honoured as the cleanest in their respective states.

How cities were judged

This 10th edition assessed 4,751 urban local bodies, up from just 73 in the first survey in 2016. Cities were scored on 43 indicators across 10 areas, including waste segregation, collection and transport, access to toilets, the welfare of sanitation workers and handling of citizen complaints. More than 3,000 trained assessors carried out field checks with GPS-based tracking, and the ministry said about 2.7 crore citizens gave feedback.

In her address, the President said cleanliness could not be achieved by any single institution and required participation from every household. She suggested that plastic waste management and sanitation be included in school curricula. Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Manohar Lal said the real measure of success was making cleanliness a lasting habit, and encouraged states to hold their own rankings.

Why it matters

According to figures cited by the minister, the share of urban waste that is processed has risen from about 16 per cent in 2014 to 80 per cent, door-to-door collection now covers over 96 per cent of wards, and clearing old dumpsites has freed nearly 11,000 acres of urban land. The rankings are closely followed by municipal bodies and often shape how cities compete for funds and attention under the Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban.