Aligarh leads 500 cities in undertaking Swachh awareness generation activities under the fortnightly thematic activities as required under the Swachh Survekshan-2017, launched by the Ministry of Urban Development. During the evaluation of IEC (Information, Education and Communication) activities by the Ministry, Aligarh has scored the maximum marks. IEC performance has been assessed by the Ministry while evaluation of other parameters of Swachh Survekshan-2017 will be done by the Quality Council of India.

All the cities were required to furnish reports on IEC activities involving citizens along with evidence of media coverage relating to ensuring cleanliness at parks, government of offices, residential colonies, tourist places, schools etc., and welfare of sanitary workers, for evaluation. The other cities in the top 10 in this regard are: Vasai-Virar (Maharashtra), Hyderabad, Gurugram, Chandigarh, Madurai (Tamil Nadu), Vadodara and Rajkot (Gujarat), Tirupati (Andhra Pradesh) and Mysuru (Karnataka). These cities were given scores under the 50% of weightage allocated for IEC under Survey-2017.