Shillong, May 4: The top 10 of the Swachh Survekshan 2017 does not feature any town or city from the Northeast, home to the "cleanest" village in Asia, though Sikkim's Gangtok has saved face for the region by securing a place in the top 50.

Of the 434 cities and towns covered in the survey, Indore in Madhya Pradesh was declared "India's cleanest city" topping the rankings, while Gonda in Uttar Pradesh was at the bottom. The other cities in the top 10 are Bhopal, Visakhapatnam, Surat, Mysore, Tiruchirapally, New Delhi Municipal Council, Navi Mumbai, Vadodara and Chandigarh. There are 12 cities or towns from the Northeast among the 434 surveyed.

Gangtok emerged as the "cleanest" state capital in the region. While Aizawl has been declared as the "fastest" moving city in the Northeast, Nagaon in Assam is the "cleanest" city outside state capitals.

Union urban development minister M. Venkaiah Naidu, while releasing the results, said this year's survey was the "citizens' verdict" on cleanliness in urban areas with 37 lakh people providing feedback on cleanliness in 434 cities and towns accounting for about 60 per cent of the total urban population. Naidu, according to an official communiqué, said a survey will be commissioned in all the 4,041 statutory towns and cities.

He described Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh, followed by Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, as "movers and shakers" for having significantly improved their rankings from the survey conducted in 2014 before the launch of the Swachh Bharat Mission in October of that year.

The 2017 survey aimed to capture the outcomes on ground of the ongoing efforts to make urban areas open defecation-free and improve door-to-door collection, processing and disposal of municipal solid waste.

Of the total score of 2,000, 900 marks were assigned for performance in respect of open defecation-free and solid waste management, 600 marks for citizens' feedback and 500 for independent observation.

Quality Council of India, which conducted the survey in January-February, deployed 421 assessors for on-site inspection of cleanliness and another 55 for real-time monitoring of progress of survey and field inspections. Field inspectors used geo-tagged devices for collecting evidence in real-time at 17,500 locations.

The Swachh Survekshan 2016 had covered 73 cities with over a million population, besides capital cities, with Mysore topping the list. While Gangtok and Imphal had featured in the top 15 list of "leaders", Kohima and Itanagar were ranked "slow movers". Aizawl, Guwahati and Shillong require "acceleration". Agartala emerged as one of the "aspiring" leaders.

Arunachal Pradesh chief minister Pema Khandu credited residents, the municipal council, the government machinery, NGOs and social activists for improving Itanagar's ranking from 497 to 216. He said while the administration would do its best, the success of these initiatives was in the hands of citizens who have the responsibility to keep their surroundings clean.