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9th Anniversary: Free Tote & Mug

Lucknow is clean, just not everywhere.  How did it knock Indore off in rankings?

The city has scored 198/200 in the 2026 clean-air survey, but its historic heart continues to struggle with basic civic infrastructure.

Lucknow is officially clean. Someone should probably tell Chowk. The City of Nawabs has scored 198 out of 200 in the 2026 Swachh Vayu Sarvekshan, edging out Indore by just one point among Indian cities with a population above 10 lakh. 

Electric buses, electric waste-collection vehicles, mechanised road sweepers and scientific waste processing have given Lucknow something to celebrate: cleaner air and a civic-cleanliness effort that is clearly working.

But there is another Lucknow that does not appear quite as spotless on paper. It begins where the wide boulevards give way to narrow lanes, where the green belts disappear and the garbage bins overflow, where a pothole can be as much a part of the landscape as a centuries-old building. This is Purana Lucknow: Chowk, Nazirabad, Akbari Gate and the neighbourhoods that give........

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