Indore gets cleanest city tag for third year in a row; Ambikapur, Mysuru among top rankers
New Delhi: Indore was adjudged India's cleanest city for the third straight year in the central government's cleanliness survey announced on Wednesday.
The second and third positions in the category were grabbed by Ambikapur in Chhattisgarh and Mysuru in Karnataka. The Swachh Survekshan awards 2019 were conferred by President Ram Nath Kovind at a ceremony here.
While the New Delhi Municipal Council area was given the 'Cleanest Small City' award, Uttarakhand's Gauchar was adjudged the 'Best Ganga Town' in the central government survey.
The 'Cleanest Big City' award has been bagged by Ahmedabad, while Raipur is the 'Fastest Moving Big City'.
Ujjain has been the adjudged the 'Cleanest Medium City' and Mathura-Vrindavan bagged the tag of the 'Fastest Moving Medium Cities'.
Top-ranked cities received a statue of Mahatma Gandhi as a memento for their work towards cleanliness. Swachh Survekshan 2019 covered all urban local bodies in the country, making it the largest such cleanliness survey in the world.
"Mahatma Gandhi had played a pivotal role in spearheading the movement of cleanliness. I hope people will take inspiration from the just concluded Kumbh Mela and the level of cleanliness in it," Kovind said.
"There is a need to change the mindset of the people towards cleanliness as many people pay a lot of attention to personal hygiene and cleanliness at home but not to public cleanliness. The culture of cleanliness has to become an integral part of in the lives of the citizens," he added.
The President also said there is a need to include cleanliness in the curriculum of schools and higher educational institutions.
Union Housing and Urban Affairs Minister Hardeep Singh Puri said the urban transformation that is being attempted in the country is the most omprehensive and ambitious framework of planned urbanisation.
"The fact that urban sanitation had never before been brought to the centre-stage spoke of the common perception that cleaning urban India was an impossible task. These states and cities have risen to that challenge," Puri said.
"To ensure that the momentum and efforts are sustained, we are actively considering the idea of continuing this initiative by having periodic rankings based on data being provided by cities and citizens' feedback," he added.
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Air India's A350 aircraft enroute to London faces tech issue; returns to Delhi
New Delhi (PTI): Air India's A350 aircraft enroute to London Heathrow returned to the national capital due to a technical issue on Thursday afternoon after being airborne for nearly seven hours.
The same A350-900 aircraft VT-JRF had faced a technical issue on March 15, following which the plane operating the flight from New York to Delhi was diverted to the Irish town of Shannon, sources said.
An Air India spokesperson said its flight AI111, operating from Delhi to London on Thursday, made a precautionary air-return to the national capital following a suspected technical issue.
"The aircraft landed safely and consistent with Air India's high safety standards, it is currently subject to extensive technical evaluations, which will require additional time to complete," the spokesperson said in a statement.
According to the sources, noises were heard in the aircraft following which it was diverted.
The spokesperson also regretted the inconvenience caused to the passengers due to the unforeseen situation and said the airline was making every effort to ensure passengers are able to continue their journey to London at the earliest.
Details about the number of passengers onboard could not be ascertained.
The aircraft operating the flight AI111 was airborne for around four hours before the decision was taken to divert the plane when it was in the Saudi Arabia airspace. In total, the plane was airborne for nearly seven hours before landing back in the national capital, as per information available on flight tracking website Flightradar24.com.
The flight had taken off from Delhi around 6 am on Thursday and landed back at about 12.30 pm.
Air India started operating A350-900 planes from January 2024.
