Surat: The city of Surat, which was ranked first last year as the cleanest city in the country, has achieved another milestone. Surat has made the city and the state proud by bagging first rank in the ‘Clean Air Survey-2024’ organized by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, beating 131 cities across the country.

Besides being the fastest growing city, Surat has managed to achieve a significant reduction of 1.71% in PM10 particles in the year 2013-2014. Surat city was ranked 13th and Indore was ranked first in the ‘Swachch Vayu Survekshan’ held last year 2023. In 2023, the Surat Municipal Corporation has taken a big leap this year by undertaking intensive work such as fixing missing facilities, taking new measures and elimination of errors and secured the first rank in the survey by securing 194 marks out of the stipulated total of 200.

For this achievement of Surat, a prize money of Rs. 1.5 crore with the award of ‘National Clean Air City’ by the Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change will be awarded at Jaipur on September 07 under the program of National Mission for Clean Air.

A new initiative ‘Swachh Vayu Survekshana’ was launched in 2019 by the Ministry of Environment, Forests and Climate Change, Union Government, to assess the efforts of non-attainment cities to improve air quality in Indian cities and target a 30% reduction in particles in air. Cities are evaluated mainly based on 08 factors. These include parameters such as solid waste management, road dust, dust generated from construction and demolition waste, vehicular emissions, industrial emissions, public awareness programs and improvement of air quality.

The Surat Municipal Corporation has implemented various projects worth about Rs. In which approximately 4000 metric tons of dust is removed from the road through mechanical sweeper, 35% e-vehicles are used instead of traditional vehicles for door-to-door garbage collection in 100% of the houses, the emission of carbon dioxide has been reduced by approximately 7000 metric tons annually. A total of 50 electrical charging stations, automatic testing stations and necessary infrastructure facilities have been created by giving benefits in the tax rate as part of encouraging the citizens.

In collaboration with the World Resources Institute, a total of 280 operational projects have been implemented to reduce the use of natural resources and manage construction and demolition waste by following clean construction guidelines.

By deploying 580 e-buses instead of conventional buses against the total target of 600 e-buses for public transport in Surat, approximately 66 metric tonnes of carbon dioxide emissions have been reduced annually from the 114 km BRTS network.

Officials of Central Pollution Control Board-CPCB, Gujarat Pollution Control Board-GPCB and National Environmental Engineering Research Institute (NEERI) visited various plants of the city on August 16 and 17 for clean air survey by Union Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change.