<span style="color: #222222;">Centre has declared Ambikapur, Rajkot, Surat, Mysore, Indore and Navi Mumbai as five-star garbage free cities. Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs Ministry today announced the results of star rating of garbage free cities. Six cities have been rated 5 Star, 65 Cities rated 3 star and 70 cities rated 1 Star.</span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;"> </span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">Housing and Urban Affairs Minister, Hardeep Singh Puri also launched the revised protocol for the star rating of garbage free cities. Addressing the media, the Minister said, the importance of sanitation and effective solid waste management has been brought to the forefront now due to the corona virus crisis.</span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;"> </span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">He said, Swacch Bharat Mission has played important role in the last five years to ensure a high degree of cleanliness and sanitation in urban areas. He said, our cities and towns will continue to set new benchmarks in Swachhata thus paving the way for a Swachh, Swasth, Shashakt and Sampann Atma Nirbhar New India.</span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;"> </span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">The star rating protocol was launched by the Ministry in January 2018 to institutionalize a mechanism for cities to achieve garbage free status and to motivate cities to achieve higher degrees of cleanliness.</span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;"> </span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">Ministry's Secretary, Durga Shanker Mishra said, in the recent phase of star rating assessment, 1435 cities applied. He added that during the assessments, 1.19 crore citizen feedbacks and over 10 lakh geo-tagged pictures were collected and 5 thousand 175 solid waste processing plants were visited by 1 thousand 210 field assessors. He said, 141 cities have been certified with star ratings during the field assessment.</span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">   </span><br />'' <span style="color: #222222;">Since its launch in 2014, Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban has made significant progress in the area of both sanitation and solid waste management. 4 thousand 324 urban local bodies have been declared open defecation free. More than 66 lakhs individual household toilets and over 6 lakhs community and public toilets have been constructed. </span><br />