The Swachh Vayu Sarvekshan rankings were designed to recognise cities taking action against air pollution. A technical review by the Indian Institute of Science now questions whether the system measures cleaner air at all, arguing that high scores can reflect administrative compliance even when residents continue to face severe pollution.
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 and replacing it with a system that gives much greater weight to measured air-quality outcomes. Its central criticism is institutional: urban local bodies submit data, assess their own performance and compete for prize money of up to Rs 1.5 crore, while mandatory independent verification is absent.
That concern matters because the rankings are not merely an awards exercise. They influence how cities present their clean-air performance, how administrative action is evaluated and how public attention is directed. If the score rewards the completion of checklists more than the reduction of pollution, the ranking can create a favourable official picture without establishing whether people are breathing cleaner air.
The review followed the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change’s announcement of the fifth Swachh Vayu Sarvekshan Awards on September 7. Lucknow topped Category 1, which covers cities with populations above 10 lakh, with 198 out of 200 marks. Indore scored 197 and Jabalpur 195. Yet the review notes that Lucknow recorded an Air Quality Index of 374 in December 2025, a level classified as “very poor”.
That comparison does not by itself establish that the ranking is incorrect. It does, however, expose the difference between two kinds of performance measurement. One tracks whether a city has prepared plans, submitted information or implemented listed interventions. The other asks whether concentrations of harmful pollutants have actually fallen. The IISc review argues that the present framework gives too much importance to the first category and too little to the second.
This is a familiar administrative problem in urban governance. Activities that are easy to document often receive stronger institutional attention than outcomes that are difficult to control. A city can report road-dust measures, pollution-under-control testing centres or electric-vehicle charging infrastructure. But those facilities do not automatically demonstrate a reduction in emissions. The missing link is measurable evidence connecting the intervention to cleaner air.
The report specifically says the framework relies heavily on self-assessment by urban local bodies. That arrangement places reporting, evaluation and competition within the same broad administrative chain. Without independent checks, the system has limited ability to test whether reported actions are operating on the ground, whether they cover the areas where pollution is highest or whether they have produced a measurable improvement.
The review recommends third-party audits, satellite checks, public disclosure and participation by civil-society organisations. These proposals would change the ranking from a largely administrative assessment into a more open verification system. They would also make the process more difficult to manage, because field audits and public disclosure can expose differences between official submissions and conditions visible on roads, construction sites, waste-burning locations and industrial areas.
The choice of pollutants is another major weakness identified by the review. It says the framework focuses heavily on PM10 interventions while giving inadequate attention to PM2.5, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and ozone. This matters because different pollutants come from different sources and carry different risks. A clean-air framework that measures only a limited part of the pollution mix can overstate progress even when other harmful pollutants remain significant.
The review also flags agricultural residue burning and secondary PM2.5 formation as insufficiently addressed. These sources do not fit neatly within the boundaries of a single municipal department or city. Pollution can travel across administrative jurisdictions, while chemical processes in the atmosphere can create fine particulate matter away from the original source. A city-level ranking therefore faces a basic design challenge: it must hold local authorities responsible for what they can control without ignoring pollution generated beyond municipal borders.
The categorisation of 131 cities by population is also questioned. The current division places cities into three population-based categories, but the review argues that population size does not necessarily reflect the nature or intensity of pollution sources. Industrial hubs such as Korba, Talcher, Angul and Kalinga Nagar are cited as examples. Their pollution challenges may be shaped more by industrial activity than by population alone.
This distinction is important for the design of urban performance rankings. Comparing cities only by population can make the categories appear administratively neat while concealing very different emissions profiles. A large residential city, an industrial centre and a rapidly expanding construction market may require different indicators, even if they fall within the same population band.
The review’s criticism of road-dust management and public transport points to another imbalance. Road dust is visible and can be linked to municipal operations, making it relatively easy to include in a checklist. Public transport, by contrast, requires an assessment of service coverage, usage, fleet composition and the extent to which it reduces dependence on private vehicles. The report says public transport receives limited marks, while indicators such as pollution-under-control testing centres and electric-vehicle charging infrastructure are rewarded without adequately measuring emissions reductions.
That design can encourage cities to count inputs rather than outcomes. A charging station is an infrastructure asset, but its presence does not reveal how many vehicles use it or whether it has reduced emissions. Similarly, a pollution-under-control centre indicates an enforcement mechanism, but not necessarily the real-world condition of vehicles or the emissions avoided through testing. The review’s argument is that these indicators should not carry greater practical significance than direct air-quality results.
The proposed remedy is to make AQI performance account for at least 50% of the score. This would not eliminate the need to measure plans, enforcement and infrastructure. It would change their role. Administrative actions would become supporting evidence, while pollution levels would form the core test of whether a city is improving.
The distinction between AQI and individual pollutant concentrations will also matter to implementation. The source material identifies AQI performance as the proposed central measure, while separately arguing for greater attention to PM2.5, sulphur dioxide, nitrogen oxides and ozone. The review therefore points towards a framework that must be transparent about both the aggregate score and the pollutants behind it. Without that disclosure, a single city-wide number can hide neighbourhood-level and pollutant-specific problems.
Transparency is a recurring concern in the IISc review. It calls for public disclosure and flags gaps in the current system. Public access to the underlying data would allow residents, researchers and civil-society groups to examine whether a city’s score corresponds with its monitoring results and visible conditions. It could also make it easier to distinguish between a city that has formally complied with an action plan and one that has achieved measurable pollution reduction.
The review suggests that if the methodology remains focused on implementation rather than outcomes, the ranking should be renamed the “Swachh Vayu Action Plan Implementation Ranking”. That proposed name captures the institutional issue at the heart of the debate. A ranking that measures action-plan implementation should not be understood as a direct ranking of clean air. The label matters because awards influence public interpretation and political as well as administrative incentives.
The larger urban question is whether performance systems are helping cities solve pollution or helping them demonstrate compliance. Municipal administrations operate under pressure to submit reports, meet programme conditions and compete for recognition and funds. Those functions are not inherently opposed to environmental improvement. But when reporting is easier to reward than measurable results, the framework can shift attention towards what is easiest to certify.
The review does not establish that every high-ranked city has failed to improve air quality, nor does the example of Lucknow’s December 2025 AQI alone invalidate the rankings. Its importance lies in identifying a structural weakness: the current system may not reliably connect official scores with the conditions experienced by urban residents.
The evidence supplied in the report supports a clear conclusion but leaves implementation questions unresolved. The conclusion is that India’s clean-air rankings need stronger independent verification, broader pollutant coverage and a much larger role for measured air-quality outcomes. What remains unclear is whether the ministry will accept the recommendation to scrap the framework, modify its indicators or retain the existing system with additional checks. The next significant development will be the government’s response to the IISc review and any changes to the methodology of future Swachh Vayu Sarvekshan assessments.
