Swachh Shehar Jodi: Ahmedabad and Sanand Take Rank One

The Department of Urban Development in the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs announced the results of the Swachh Shehar Jodi initiative, the city pairing programme run under Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban 2.0. The winners were recognised as part of the Swachh Survekshan 2025-26 award ceremony in New Delhi, where President Droupadi Murmu honoured the country's cleanest cities at the tenth edition of the survey. The award function was held on 11 November 2026 in the presence of Manohar Lal, Union Minister for Housing and Urban Affairs and Power, and Tokhan Sahu, Minister of State.

The three winning city pairs

Ahmedabad entered as a million plus city and Sanand from the bracket of towns between twenty thousand and fifty thousand people. Indore is also a million plus city while Depalpur comes from the smallest bracket. Tirupati belongs to the category of towns between fifty thousand and three lakh residents, and Kuppam to the twenty thousand to fifty thousand group. Ranking was done on the combined score of mentor and mentee, so the award reflects joint effort rather than the standing of one city alone.

What the pairing programme does

Swachh Shehar Jodi was launched by Manohar Lal on 27 September 2025 as the first mentorship scheme of its kind in urban waste management. It linked 70 high performing mentor cities with about 191 mentee cities drawn from 33 States and Union Territories, using the Swachh Survekshan 2024-25 rankings to decide who would mentor whom. A memorandum of understanding between the paired cities was signed at a national event in Sonipat. Only the best performing pair of each mentor city was considered for the award. The idea rests on the principle of Each One, Teach One, which the Ministry links to the Guru Shishya tradition of passing on knowledge.

Scale of the survey behind the awards

• The tenth edition of Swachh Survekshan assessed 4,751 urban local bodies.
• Assessment used 176 sub indicators grouped into 10 sections.
• More than 3,000 trained field assessors carried out ground surveys with GPS enabled monitoring.
• 60 national awards were announced under 7 categories this year.
• The theme was Swachhata Ki Nayi Pehel, Badhayein Haath, Karein Safai Saath.

The seven award categories cover the top three Swachh Shehar Jodi pairs, the top three clean cities, city ranks in five population groups, river front towns, coastal towns, clean Himalayan cities and the first ranked city of each State or Union Territory.