Khattar launches 'Swachh Shehar Jodi’ initiative from Sonepat

Union Minister for Urban Development Manohar Lal Khattar on Saturday launched the ‘Swachh Shehar Jodi’ (SSJ) initiative to clean cities across the country in Sonepat on Saturday. Chief Minister Nayab Singh Saini also joined the programme from Karnal through video-conferencing. He said Haryana would play a leading role in the SSJ initiative.

Addressing the gathering, Khattar said we had to make the cities of the country clean and dirt-free with the spirit of unity and antyodya. The Father of the Nation, Mahatma Gandhi, had given two ideas - political freedom and other cleanliness.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi carried forward the idea of cleanliness by launching the Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan in 2014, he said. A total of 72 mentor cities and around 200 mentee cities had been added across the country under the SSJ initiative, he added.

It will be the largest ever city-twinning framework in urban waste management, the Union Minister said.

Khattar further said the selection of the cities had been made on the basis of the recent Swachh Survekshan. Under this SSJ initiative, the best performing cities have been made mentors, while the cities in need of improvement have been selected as mentees. Each mentor-mentee pair has been formed on the basis of geographical proximity and performance difference so that the knowledge exchanges to be more relevant and practical, he said.

A memorandum of understanding (MoU) was signed between all participating cities during the national event. “In view of the continued successes of the Swachh Survekshan, the Union Ministry has also set up the Super Swachh League. The top three ranked cities in the five population categories in the survey 2022, 2023, and 2024 have been included in this league,” Khattar said.

These cities will act as mentor in the SCHW framework. The mentee cities had been selected from the cities at the bottom of the cumulative ranking of states to develop a practical and peer-based learning model, he added. The Ministry for Housing and Urban Affairs has launched a 100-day action plan by issuing official guidelines for the SSJ initiative on August 26. During the period, each city pair will create a joint action plan with clear goals and milestones. This effort will be evaluated in Swachh Survekshan 2026, Khattar said.

The Sonepat Municipal Corporation signed MoUs with Pataudi, Farrukhnagar, Kundli, Narnaul and Hodal municipalities while the Karnal Municipal Corporation signed MoUs with Siwan, Ismailabad, Kanawali, Narnaund and Rajaund municipalities to support in cleanliness in presence Khattar.

The Union Minister also launched a Swachhta song written by Shailendra and sung by Amit Trivedi and Shreya Ghoshal. The union minister also spoke to Urban Local Bodies (ULB) Minister Kailash Vijayvargiya of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh’s ULB Minister Anil Kumar Sharma during the programme. MLAs Krishna Gahlawat and Nikhil Madaan; Mayor Rajiv Jain; Rupa Mishra, Joint Secretary, Urban Development Ministry; Vikas Gupta, Commissioner and Secretary, ULB; DC Sushil Sarwan; and MC Commissioner Harshit Kumar were present during the programme.