New Delhi: President Droupadi Murmu will present the Swachh Survekshan Awards 2025-26 at Vigyan Bhawan, New Delhi, on 11 November 2026. Union Minister for Housing and Urban Affairs and Power Manohar Lal and Minister of State Tokhan Sahu will be present. The awards, organised by the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs, honour India’s cleanest cities for their work under Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban.
The 10th edition of the survey was held under the theme “Swachhata Ki Nayi Pehel – Badhayein Haath, Karein Safai Saath”. It has grown from 73 urban local bodies in 2016 to more than 4,751 cities this year. The new edition gives greater weight to citizen feedback and covers more urban river fronts, coastlines and water bodies. It also adds indicators on preventing open defecation and open urination, keeping tourist and heritage sites clean, and encouraging behaviour change in schools.
Urban local bodies were scored on 43 indicators across 10 areas. These include waste segregation, collection and transport, solid waste management, visible cleanliness, access to sanitation, mechanised desludging, used water management, advocacy for cleanliness, the welfare of sanitation workers, and citizen feedback and grievance redressal. More than 3,000 trained assessors carried out on-ground checks with real-time GPS monitoring. The whole process was digital, from evidence submission to verification, with quality checks at every stage.
Awards will also go to top performers in ‘Swachh Shehar Jodi’, a mentorship programme that paired 70 mentor cities with 191 mentee cities across 33 States and UTs. Manohar Lal launched it on 27 September 2025, when the cities signed an MoU. Mentee cities improved on several indicators between Swachh Survekshan 2024 and 2025-26. Visible cleanliness rose from 48 to 70 per cent and door-to-door collection from 52 to 74 per cent. Source segregation went from 16 to 30 per cent, access to sanitation from 11 to 38 per cent, used water management from 32 to 53 per cent, and advocacy for cleanliness from 48 to 66 per cent. The winners will be announced on 11 November.