Ranchi/Dhanbad, May 4: Bokaro satellite town Chas has surprised everyone to become Jharkhand's cleanest city with an all-India ranking of 41 among the 434 cities surveyed in the Centre's Swachh Survekshan 2017, as part of the Swachh Bharat Mission, the results of which were released today.

Overall, urban Jharkhand - municipal bodies and notified area committee areas - appears cleaner this year, with Jamshedpur ranked 64, Giridih 81, Hazaribagh 91, Deoghar 102, Dhanbad 109 and Ranchi 117.

Dhanbad, which was dirtiest among the 73 cities surveyed last year, displayed vast improvement this year. Among other notable areas, Mango and Adityapur stand at 131 and 144 ranks.

Chas and Jamshedpur were also adjudged the cleanest urban hubs in eastern India in small and bigger city categories, respectively.

Bokaro DC R.M. Ray and Chas Municipal Corporation chief executive officer Krishna Kumar, as well as East Singhbhum deputy commissioner Amit Kumar and Jamshedpur Notified Area special officer Deepak Sahay collected their respective certificates for Chas and Jamshedpur from Union urban development minister M. Venkaiah Naidu in Delhi. The two teams also got a bust of Mahatma Gandhi each.

In the 2016 survey, held only in cities with over 10 lakh population, Ranchi was ranked 62, Jamshedpur 66 and Dhanbad last at 73. In 2017, among the cities with over 10 lakh population, Jamshedpur is at 26, Dhanbad at 33 and Ranchi at 36.

"We were better prepared this year. Union minister M Venkaiah Naidu while announcing the rankings praised the significant improvement of all the local urban bodies of Jharkhand compared to surveys in 2014 and 2016. This shows the efforts put in by local urban bodies of the state in the sanitation sector," said special secretary in the state urban development department Rajesh Kumar Sharma. "Of course, there is room for improvement," he said.

A visibly elated Chas Municipal Corporation city manager Shabbir M. told The Telegraph that their entire municipal area had been declared open-defecation free in January when the survey was conducted.

"This apart, our efforts at segregation of waste at source into wet and solid in door-to-door collections and innovative efforts to convert a dump yard into a park and involve hotels and restaurants for onsite disposal of food waste earned us a good score," he said.

"Jamshedpur with Jusco's compost plant scored well in processing and disposing of municipal waste. There was adequate mechanism for waste collection in Jamshedpur Notified Area and public campaigns were effective," Sharma added. "Ranchi and Dhanbad lagged behind due to open defecation and lacunae in toilet construction and waste processing."

Carried out during January and February, the cleanliness survey evaluated cities on five parameters - waste collection, solid-waste management, construction of toilets, sanitation strategies and behaviour change communication. The rankings are based on data provided by municipal corporations, independent assessors and citizen feedback. In all, 3.7 million Indians participated in the exercise.