Bhubaneswar: On Friday, the city slipped to 261, its lowest-ever rank in the Centre's Swachh City dashboard that rates cities and towns on cleanliness parameters.

Several initiatives of the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation to improve the city's sanitation situation are not yielding desirable results. The low rank is the reflection of the citizens' unhappiness over the corporation's poor performance in keeping the city clean.

The daily ranking on the national dashboard is based on the inputs received from the citizens. Ironically, the ranking of the city has witnessed a steep dip in the past few months and there is no sign of improvement. Across the country, 4,041 cities and towns are taking part in the survey.

When it comes to the state, the city occupies the second position, while Sambalpur topped the chart with an impressive national rank of 139. Since the advent of the Swachh City dashboard in April last year, Bhubaneswar best national rank was 59. However, poor sanitation work led to the city slowly losing its good position over time.

The Telegraph had in February reported about the under-performance of the city when Bhubaneswar's slipped to the 185th position. If that was bad, Friday's rank of 261 has left the authorities worried.

The civic body claims to have made every effort to lure citizens to take part in the cleanliness mission and the ongoing Swachh Survekshan III to get good marks and better its rank in the national level survey. The corporation took the help of various social media platforms, organised street shows, held community meetings and even rolled out a Swachh Survekshan tableau.

However, the efforts have failed to win the hearts of citizens here. They are unhappy with the city's cleanliness and have shown no interest in taking part in the survey.

"The city authorities did intensify the cleanliness activities in January, but the activities stopped abruptly. This is weird," said Gaja Vihar resident Prathana Mishra.

The swachh city report card of Bhubaneswar shows that it has 989 registered users, who share inputs on the state of cleanliness. But only 267 are active, while the rest are passive users. The city has got only 65 responses on cleanliness. Of them, 27 are satisfied, 36 are unhappy while two remain neutral.

Mayor Ananta Narayan Jena, however, said they had intensified the cleanliness activities across the city.

"We always ask the citizens to put their suggestions based on which we will take steps to improve any particular parameter. I will look into the matter and take action if any of our sanitation agencies are found not doing their job properly," said Jena.