“Measured once in the main national ranking: 438th of 446, in 2023.”
Kolkata Livability & Sanitation
Kolkata in Swachh Survekshan (National Cleanliness Survey), year by year, and KMC sanitation budget estimates
Kolkata has been placed in Swachh Survekshan's main national ranking once. In the 2023 edition, Kolkata Municipal Corporation was ranked 438th of 446 cities with more than 1 lakh people, with 1,051 of 9,500 marks. That is near the very bottom. West Bengal officials publicly disputed the result.
Kolkata is missing from most other editions, but MoHUA's reports give a different reason from the one usually repeated. In 2019, 2020 and 2022 the reports record that the West Bengal state opted out of the survey (except three cantonment boards). They attribute that decision to the state, not to KMC. In 2024-25 no West Bengal city appears in any of the main population-category rankings, and the report gives no reason. Separately, Kolkata was scored in the Ganga Town assessment in 2022, 2023 and 2024-25.
About this data
What this page shows
Kolkata's status in each Swachh Survekshan edition from 2016 to 2025-26, with the source for each year. It also shows KMC's 2023 score broken down by component, the top cities in each edition's published ranking (labelled with the population category that ranking covers), and KMC's budget estimates for health services and solid waste management.
Where the data comes from
We used the Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) Swachh Survekshan reports for 2016, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2022, 2023 and 2024-25, and the official results APIs for 2022, 2023 and 2024-25 (ss2022-api, ss2023-api and ss2024-api.sbmurban.org). The Ganga Town figures come from the separate Ganga Town reports for 2022, 2023 and 2024-25. The spending figures come from KMC's Mayor's Budget Estimate Volume II, 2017-18 to 2026-27. Each year's page reference is in the status table above.
Limitations worth knowing
Scores cannot be compared from one year to the next. The maximum score changes with each edition (6,000 in 2020, 7,500 in 2022, 9,500 in 2023, 12,500 in 2024-25), and so does the ranked group. The 2023 chart ranks all cities above 1 lakh population, because that edition had no separate national ranking for cities above 10 lakh. The other years rank cities above 10 lakh. The 2024-25 Million Plus list leaves out the four Super Swachh League cities: Indore, Surat, Navi Mumbai and Vijayawada. Kolkata's status in 2017, 2018 and 2021 is not confirmed from a primary source. In 2023 West Bengal took part only partly, with 20 urban local bodies, and part of the survey relies on self-reported municipal data and citizen feedback. Budget estimates are plans, not spending: KMC's actual revenue-fund spending has run at roughly 55-80% of the estimate. A budget allocation also says nothing about how clean a street ends up.
Correction
An earlier version of this page said Kolkata was absent from every Swachh Survekshan ranking from 2020 to 2025 because KMC did not participate. That was wrong. Kolkata was ranked in 2023, and in 2019, 2020 and 2022 the state government opted out. The underlying ranking data has also been rebuilt from the official reports. The previous 2023 ranks and 2022 scores had been misaligned.
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