Why Nagpur’s Clean City Status Crumbled in Swachh Rankings 2024-25

thenewsdirt
Jul 23
7 min read

Nagpur, the largest city in the Vidarbha region, has plummeted in the latest Swachh Survekshan 2024-25 rankings, raising concerns among officials and citizens.

In the nationwide cleanliness survey announced by the President in July 2025, Nagpur scored just 9,328 points and slid to 27th place out of 40 million-plus cities.

This outcome stands in stark contrast to Nagpur’s former status as one of India’s cleanest cities: a decade ago, it was routinely among the top five and hailed as a model of urban sanitation.

The city once again failed to earn a single star in the Garbage Free City rating, and its bid for the upgraded Water++ certification was rejected for not meeting higher sanitation benchmarks.

These results reflect “serious gaps in scientific waste processing, management of legacy waste, and public engagement in source segregation” in Nagpur. Observers say the city’s stagnating sanitation performance, despite continued investment, points to breakdowns in the waste-management system and civic coordination.

Survey Results and Ranking Context

According to official figures, Nagpur’s 9,328 points out of 12,500 placed it at 27th position in the million-plus category. Leading performers this year were Indore, Surat and Navi Mumbai, with Indore retaining the No.1 spot (for the eighth year running) thanks to “consistent public participation, robust enforcement and unwavering civic discipline”. These three cities were included in a separate “Super Swachh League” created for consistently top-performing cities and were not ranked in the main million-plus category this year.

In their absence, Ahmedabad secured the No.1 position in the official rankings among million-plus cities.

By contrast, Nagpur’s score lagged behind that of many peer cities. Within Maharashtra itself, Pimpri-Chinchwad (rank 7), Pune (8), Thane (15), Nashik (22) and Kalyan-Dombivli (24) all outperformed Nagpur. Nationally, Ahmedabad (ranked 1), Bhopal (2) and Raipur (4) also placed well above Nagpur.

Despite scoring more points than last year, Nagpur’s ranking barely budged. For comparison, Nagpur had ranked 18th in 2020 but fell to 86th among all urban bodies in 2023.

City officials note that the Open Defecation Free (ODF) Water+ certification was retained, reflecting continued wastewater treatment and public toilet coverage.

However, the inability to secure even a single Garbage Free City (GFC) star, a key indicator, highlights the survey’s concern.

The formal report card shows Nagpur scored only about 30% in door-to-door waste collection and just 1% in waste segregation at source. In practical terms, this means the vast majority of household waste is neither picked up regularly nor sorted before disposal, a reversal from previous years when collection was near universal.

Observers say these low marks for basic services directly explain why Nagpur’s overall rating has stalled despite high scores on backend infrastructure.

Systemic Waste Management Failures

Several audits have pointed to technical and operational failures in Nagpur’s waste-management system. Experts note that the city still lacks scientific treatment facilities for much of its garbage.

A January 2024 report concluded that “lack of scientific processing of waste, lack of scientific land filling and absence of construction and demolition management” were key reasons Nagpur again scored zero stars under the GFC category.

In other words, simply having trucks and bins in place is not enough: the waste must be treated and disposed of in engineered plants and landfills, which Nagpur has not fully implemented.

Officials concede that major facilities, such as bio-gas plants and composting units, are still pending or at early stages, even as waste continues to accumulate.

The impact of these deficiencies became clear in the survey numbers. One local leader noted that Nagpur’s official report card awarded only 30% for door-to-door collection and 1% for source segregation. “These aren’t minor setbacks – they’re proof of systemic failure,” one civic analyst said.

In practical terms, thousands of tonnes of garbage are being generated without corresponding pick-up or sorting. The city’s infrastructure now appears underused.

Nagpur has roughly 7,000 sanitation workers, multiple sweepers and vacuum machines, and plans for a large landfill, but the waste does not make it into those systems.

According to municipal insiders, the problem is that many areas are effectively bypassed in day-to-day operations. In short, the city has the equipment on paper but lacks consistent execution on the ground.

The survey also flagged the persistence of garbage dumps and “black spots” across Nagpur. Civic officials acknowledge at least 400 “garbage vulnerable points”, open dumping sites in the city, though some insiders say this is an undercount.

These range from piles of waste near markets and residential streets to legacy landfills that have never been fully rehabilitated. The presence of so many black spots undermines any cleanliness gains.

According to a Times of India report, waste has “mushroomed across every zone, from residential colonies to market areas”. In effect, the city’s sanitation gains have been undone by uncontrolled dumping in public spaces.

Administrative Oversight and Civic Challenges

Analysts say responsibility for these failures lies partly with contracted service providers and partly with lax enforcement.

Since the early 2010s, Nagpur’s door-to-door waste collection was outsourced to two private companies (AG Enviro and BVG).

A local BJP legislator, Pravin Datke, recently called for the cancellation of those contracts, arguing that the companies “often skip rounds, so garbage piles up in public areas, and no chemical treatment is carried out at the Bhandewadi waste management centre”. “Nagpur… has now fallen to 27th place due to the companies’ poor performance,” he told the Maharashtra assembly, warning that no corrective action had been taken despite residents’ complaints.

Datke urged the state government to decentralise the contracts by zone to improve accountability. His criticism echoes the survey findings. When private collectors shirk their duties, garbage simply accumulates outdoors.

At the same time, city officials admit that enforcement of basic rules has been weak. Compared to cities like Indore, Nagpur has largely refrained from penalising households or businesses that dump waste in the open.

An NMC official summed it up bluntly: “You can’t keep explaining the same thing… Without action, awareness becomes background noise”. In Indore, repeated warnings quickly give way to fines, but in Nagpur, penalties are rare. The effect is stark. Even when collection vehicles reportedly “arrive on time, residents continue to dump garbage in the open, ignoring collection schedules and basic waste segregation norms”.

A sweep worker put it simply: “Schools participate, citizens join campaigns. But it vanishes the moment you ask them to stop throwing garbage near their homes.”

The bottom line is that the city’s sanitation systems rely on public cooperation, and by most accounts, that cooperation has eroded.

These governance and behavioural gaps have combined to nullify Nagpur’s earlier investments.

The Swachh Survekshan statistics suggest that Nagpur scored near-perfect marks on some backend criteria, such as processing capacity and cleanliness of residential markets, yet still failed the survey’s basic test of daily cleaning.

Infrastructure and public campaigns alone have not translated into cleaner streets. Without consistent monitoring and enforcement at the ground level, waste simply bypasses the system.

Officials also point out that actual scoring methodologies may have exaggerated the shortfalls.

Nagpur’s brand ambassador for Swachh Bharat, Kaustav Chatterjee, has questioned how the city could receive only 1% for segregation and 30% for collection.

He argues that even if not fully ideal, Nagpur “should have scored at least 60–70%” in these categories, and that the corporation should challenge the low marks.

Expert and Official Reactions

In the wake of the survey, experts and officials have voiced concern over Nagpur’s decline. Former Nagpur health officer Dr. Milind Ganvir, who once helped establish the city’s acclaimed bin-free model, lamented the downturn. “When Indore officials visited us, they admired our system. But while they kept improving, we became laggards.”.

Dr Ganvir’s words underscore a widely shared frustration. Nagpur’s waste management model was once nationally lauded, but now the city has lost its momentum.

Sanitation specialist Dr. Pradip Dasarwar offered a similar warning. Noting that Nagpur’s street dump sites have multiplied even as equipment and campaigns increased, he said the city’s “promise of becoming a truly clean city will remain buried under its own waste” unless enforcement and civic culture change.

City officials themselves acknowledge the gap between policy and reality. Municipal Commissioner Dr Abhijit Chaudhari pointed to several new projects, including recycling of construction debris, biogas plants and bio-mining of dumps, as steps to improve the system.

He noted that the corporation has conducted extensive awareness drives (“Ek Tarik Ek Taas”, “Swachh Muhalla Contest”, etc.) throughout the year. However, he also admitted that despite these efforts, Nagpur again finished 27th.

The commissioner said the city has “stuck to 27th” place, though some parameters did improve. In public statements, the NMC has vowed to continue such initiatives, but has not disputed the survey’s core findings.

Meanwhile, leaders in Vidarbha have highlighted the contrast between Nagpur and other regional cities.

Smaller Vidarbha towns had a “mixed bag” of results. Amravati and Chandrapur performed well (with rankings of 18th and 21st in their categories), whereas Nagpur, Vidarbha’s largest city, lagged behind even those successes.

The disappointing ranking has made headlines across the city’s media. For many local residents, the issue is already a topic of heated discussion on social and political platforms: some blame administrative failure, others blame public apathy, but few dispute that the survey has exposed cracks in Nagpur’s long-vaunted sanitation model.

Nagpur’s drop in the Swachh Survekshan is a wake-up call that goes beyond mere statistics. It underscores that building a clean city demands persistent enforcement, citizen discipline and properly functioning waste-processing facilities.

In Nagpur’s case, years of sophisticated infrastructure and ambitious planning have not prevented the city from backsliding once key systems were neglected. The experience highlights a broader lesson: even award-winning cities can falter if civic engagement wanes.

As Nagpur prepares for the next round of assessments, its officials and citizens alike will need to confront these challenging questions about accountability and behaviour.