Madhya Pradesh: Indore among 11 winning cities of EatSmart Cities Challenge

Indore (Madhya Pradesh): Along with being the cleanest city of the country, Indore also wins in the EatSmart Cities Challenge along with 10 other cities, including three more from Madhya Pradesh. The competition was among 108 cities across the country out of which 20 cities were competing to be in the Top 11 winners.

Indore has cleared half of the hurdles by performing well in good food practices, including more licensing and registrations, making more ‘Eat Right campuses, creating sustainable food environments and others and secured the position in the Top 20 cities in the challenge.

“The 11 winning cities include Chandigarh, Indore, Jabalpur, Jammu, Panaji, Rajkot, Rourkela, Surat, Sagar, Tumkuru and Ujjain. These cities will now enter the scale-up stage of the challenge wherein the projects undertaken at the pilot stage will now be scaled up in a sustainable manner,” the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) mentioned in its press release.

Smart City CEO Rishav Gupta congratulated citizens on the achievement.

‘Achievement of Indoreans’

‘It’s the achievement of the people of Indore. We’re already number one in cleanliness and now, the new achievement has proved that people of Indore are also number one in good eating habits’

— Rishav Gupta, CEO, Indore Smart City Development Ltd

Only Eat Right School and maximum number of campuses bring laurels for city

According to food safety officer Avashesh Agrawal, Indore has secured a place among the Top 11 cities in the challenge. ‘We’ve succeeded in making the highest number of Eat Right Campuses, including two hospitals and the only Eat Right School in the country. We also got success in two Clean Street Food Hubs, Safe Bhog Campus, highest registration and licensing and other initiatives which strengthen our position in the challenge,’ Agrawal said.

Rs 50L for each winning city

The 11 cities have been selected as winners for the next phase of scale-up and will be awarded Rs 50 lakh each by the ministry of housing and urban affairs (MoHUA). At the scale-up stage, cities will adopt an aggressive approach through food systems approach in implementation of various Eat Right India programmes on a larger scale. To support the cities, the FSSAI, along with the Food Foundation, UK, will organise a series of activities and deliberation sessions to provide technical assistance and showcase their efforts at international forums.