Swachh Vayu Sarvekshan 2023 Rankings

• The Swachh Vayu Sarvekshan 2023 (Clean Air Survey) report was released in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh.
• The survey was conducted by the Central Pollution Control Board.
• This year, the 4th International Day of Clean Air for Blue Skies (Swachh Vayu Diwas 2023) is to create stronger partnerships, increase investment, and share responsibility to overcome air pollution, with the global theme “Together for Clean Air.”
• Swachh Vayu Survekshan is an initiative by the ministry of environment, forests and climate change (MoEF&CC) to rank cities on the basis of implementation of activities approved under city action plan and air quality in 131 non-attainment cities under National Clean Air Programme (NCAP).
  • The union government had launched NCAP in 2019 with a target of reducing particulate pollution by up to 30% by 2024, with the reference base year of 2017.
• 131 cities are categorized into three groups based on population.
  • more than 10 lakh.
  • between 3 to 10 lakh.
  • less than 3 lakh.
• It is based on the actions taken by the cities to improve the air quality in different domains and not on the measurement of the air quality parameters.

MAJOR FINDINGS

• In cities with over one million population, Indore secured the first rank followed by Agra and Thane. Madurai, Howah and Jamshedpur ranked 46, 45 and 44, respectively.
• In the second category, with a population between 300,000 to one million, Amravati secured the first rank followed by Moradabad and Guntur. Jammu, Guwahati and Jalandhar ranked 38, 37 and 36, respectively.
• Similarly, for the third category, with a population of less than 300,000, Parwanoo in Himachal Pradesh secured the first rank followed by Kala Amb and Angul, while Kohima was ranked last – 39.