The Swachh Vayu Sarvekshan rankings were designed to show which Indian cities are acting against air pollution. A technical review by the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), however, argues that the system may be rewarding the completion of administrative tasks more than measurable improvements in the air residents breathe. That distinction matters because a city can score highly on plans, submissions and compliance while continuing to record dangerous pollution levels.
The review, submitted to Union Environment Minister Bhupender Yadav on September 28 by Professor Ashish Verma of the IISc Department of Civil Engineering, recommends scrapping the current framework. Its central criticism is that the ranking has a significant disconnect between city scores and pollution levels on the ground. The findings were reported by Bangalore Mirror, which said the review called for independent field audits and greater weightage to actual air-quality outcomes.
The concern emerged soon after the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change announced the fifth Swachh Vayu Sarvekshan Awards on September 7. Lucknow topped Category 1, covering cities with populations above 10 lakh, with 198 out of 200 marks. Indore followed with 197 and Jabalpur with 195. Yet Lucknow recorded an air quality index of 374 in December 2025, classified as “very poor”, according to the report cited by Bangalore Mirror.
That comparison does not by itself establish that the ranking caused or ignored Lucknow’s pollution. It does expose the problem the review is trying to address: a score that appears to certify strong performance can sit alongside a period of severely polluted air. For residents, the immediate question is not whether a municipal body has submitted an action plan, but whether pollution exposure has declined and whether daily conditions have become safer.
The review says the present framework relies heavily on self-assessment by urban local bodies. Municipal bodies submit data, assess their own performance and compete for prize money of up to Rs 1.5 crore. In the absence of mandatory independent verification, the same institution is involved in producing the evidence, measuring its performance and seeking recognition. The IISc review describes this as a conflict of interest.
This is an institutional design issue, not merely a question of how individual cities perform. A ranking system converts a complex environmental problem into a comparable score. The choice of indicators therefore determines what municipal administrations have an incentive to prioritise. If procedural compliance receives more recognition than emissions reduction, cities may rationally focus on what is easiest to document rather than what is hardest to achieve.
The review also questions the programme’s pollutant priorities. It says the framework gives heavy attention to PM10 interventions while giving inadequate weight to PM2.5, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and ozone. PM10 remains an important urban pollutant, but the review’s argument is that a city’s air-quality performance cannot be represented adequately through one dominant category of intervention when pollution comes from multiple sources.
The source report also points to agricultural residue burning and secondary PM2.5 formation as issues that are not adequately addressed. These sources can extend beyond municipal boundaries, making air-quality governance more difficult than a city-level checklist suggests. A municipal body may control some road dust, waste-burning and transport measures, but not every source that contributes to the air measured within its boundaries.
The review’s criticism of city classification raises a related planning question. The framework divides 131 cities into three population-based categories. According to the review, population size does not necessarily reflect the source or intensity of pollution. It cites industrial hubs such as Korba, Talcher, Angul and Kalinga Nagar as examples of places whose pollution profile may not be comparable with that of large urban centres simply because of population counts.
A population-based comparison can make rankings easier to communicate, but it may also conceal differences in industrial activity, geography, transport patterns and regional pollution sources. If cities with fundamentally different emissions profiles are assessed through the same structure, their scores may offer a misleading sense of equivalence. The review’s proposed alternative is not detailed in the supplied report beyond its call for a framework that gives greater weight to measurable environmental and public-health outcomes.
The selection of indicators also reveals how the system understands urban action. The review flags the weightage given to road-dust management while saying public transport receives limited marks. It also questions whether indicators such as pollution-under-control testing centres and electric-vehicle charging infrastructure are being rewarded without adequately measuring whether they have reduced emissions.
The distinction between an intervention and an outcome is crucial. A pollution-under-control centre may indicate that a compliance mechanism exists, while an EV charging station may indicate that infrastructure has been installed. Neither indicator, by itself, demonstrates a reduction in pollution. Similarly, road-cleaning activity may be documented without establishing how much dust has been prevented from entering the air or whether roadside exposure has fallen.
This does not make such interventions irrelevant. It means they should be connected to evidence of performance. The review recommends that air-quality performance account for at least 50% of the score, alongside third-party audits, satellite checks, public disclosure and civil-society participation. These proposals would shift the ranking from a system centred on reported activity to one that gives greater importance to independently checked results.
The proposed changes also have implications for accountability between levels of government. Urban local bodies can influence waste management, road maintenance, construction controls, transport planning and local enforcement. But the review’s references to industrial hubs, agricultural residue burning and secondary PM2.5 formation show that city air is shaped by sources that may cross municipal and state boundaries. A ranking that assigns responsibility only through local administrative categories may not fully capture this geography.
That makes transparency especially important. If cities are to be compared, readers need to know which data were self-reported, which were independently audited, what period was assessed and how pollution measurements influenced the final score. Without that information, a high rank can function more as a communications achievement than as a reliable account of environmental improvement.
The review suggests that if the methodology is retained without substantial change, the ranking should be renamed the “Swachh Vayu Action Plan Implementation Ranking”. The proposed name would more accurately describe a framework that measures the implementation of administrative actions rather than confirmed improvements in air quality. The distinction may appear technical, but it determines what the award claims to represent.
For cities, the bigger question is whether performance systems are helping administrations reduce exposure or merely helping them demonstrate compliance. Awards can create political and administrative incentives, but those incentives are useful only when the measure being rewarded corresponds to the public objective. In this case, the public objective is cleaner and healthier air, not simply a complete file of actions.
The evidence supplied in the report establishes a clear methodological challenge, but it does not establish the extent to which the ranking has affected pollution outcomes across all 131 cities. It also does not provide a city-by-city comparison of scores against long-term AQI trends. Those gaps make independent verification and public disclosure central to any future revision.
What the IISc review does establish is that the credibility of an air-quality ranking depends on the relationship between its score and lived environmental conditions. The Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change’s response to the recommendations, the methodology used in future editions and the extent to which independent measurements influence rankings will determine whether Swachh Vayu Sarvekshan remains an administrative scorecard or becomes a more reliable measure of urban clean-air performance.
