Swachhata Green Leaf Rating (SGLR)

What is the Swachhata Green Leaf Rating?

Swachhata Green Leaf Rating (SGLR) is a sanitation rating system for tourist accommodation, launched on 2 November 2023 by the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation (DDWS), Ministry of Jal Shakti, in collaboration with the Ministry of Tourism. Swachhata Green Leaf Rating grades a hotel, homestay, lodge, dharamshala or camp on how well it manages human waste, solid waste and greywater, and awards it 1, 3 or 5 green leaves.

The rating sits inside the sanitation architecture of Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen). The mission's ODF Plus phase is about waste management rather than toilet construction, and tourist facilities in rural and hill areas are among the largest waste generators in their Gram Panchayats. SGLR applies that logic to the hospitality sector.

Key objectives

• Give tourists a visible, comparable signal of a facility's sanitation standards.
• Push hotels, homestays and camps towards safe faecal sludge management, source segregation of solid waste and proper greywater disposal.
• Reduce single-use plastic and untreated waste at tourist destinations.
• Connect the tourism sector to the ODF Plus goals of Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen).

Main features

• Assessment is on 200 marks: 80 for faecal sludge management, 80 for solid waste management and 40 for greywater management.
• A facility must obtain a minimum of 50% in each of the three heads; facilities below 100 marks overall do not qualify for certification.
• Ratings are awarded at three levels: 1 leaf, 3 leaves and 5 leaves.
• The process is self-assessment first, then physical verification by a sub-divisional committee, then rating by a district level committee.
• Rollout was piloted in the Union Territory of Jammu and Kashmir and then extended by states including Kerala, Himachal Pradesh, Goa and Assam.

Who is eligible for the Swachhata Green Leaf Rating?

A facility can be rated if it is:

• A hotel or resort serving tourists, with or without a restaurant.
• A homestay registered with the state tourism department.
• A lodge, guest house or dharamshala providing paid or free tourist stay.
• A camp operating with portable toilets.

Who cannot apply:

• Individuals cannot apply. SGLR rates a hospitality facility, not a person. A tourist, a household or a worker cannot register for a personal benefit under it, and no money is paid to anyone under the scheme.
• A facility that cannot show basic sanitation arrangements is not eligible for a rating. It will simply fail the minimum score. Scoring below 50% in even one of the three heads, or below 100 marks overall, means no certificate.
• The rating is only available in states and districts that have rolled SGLR out and constituted the district and sub-divisional committees. Rollout has been staggered, so a facility in a district without a committee has no route to apply yet.

What documents are required for the Swachhata Green Leaf Rating?

How to apply for the Swachhata Green Leaf Rating

1. Check with your district administration or district Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen) cell whether SGLR has been rolled out in your district and whether a state portal is in use. Some states, such as Uttar Pradesh, run a dedicated SGLR registration site.
2. Register the facility with its name, category — hotel, resort, homestay, lodge, dharamshala or camp; location, number of rooms and contact details.
3. Complete the self-assessment form, scoring your facility against the three heads: faecal sludge management (80 marks), solid waste management (80 marks) and greywater management (40 marks).
4. Attach the supporting evidence; septic tank and desludging records, waste segregation and disposal records, greywater arrangements and photographs.
5. Submit the self-assessment to the local administration, which routes it to the Sub Divisional Magistrate.
6. Allow the Verification Sub-Committee to physically inspect the facility. The committee checks the claims made in the self-assessment and reports to the SDM.
7. The district level committee reviews the verified score and awards 1, 3 or 5 green leaves, or records that the facility did not qualify.
8. Display the certificate at the facility and re-apply after making improvements if you want a higher rating.

What is assessed under the three heads?

Faecal sludge management (80 marks) looks at whether toilets are connected to a compliant septic tank or sewer, whether the tank is desludged at a proper interval by an authorised operator, and where that sludge finally goes. An overflowing or unlined tank draining into open ground is the classic failure.

Solid waste management (80 marks) looks at segregation at source into wet and dry waste, on-site composting of kitchen and garden waste where possible, storage arrangements, handover to the local body or an authorised recycler, and the facility's substitution of single-use plastic: bottles, straws, small toiletry packs.

Greywater management (40 marks) looks at kitchen, bathroom and laundry wastewater: whether it goes to soak pits or a treatment arrangement rather than into a drain, road or stream, and whether any of it is reused for gardening.

Why the rating matters for a hospitality business

For a homestay or a small hotel, the direct commercial value of SGLR is signal. Tourists comparing two similar homestays in the same hill town have very little to go on regarding sanitation, and a 5 leaf certificate on the wall answers a question they would otherwise not ask.

For the destination, the value is cumulative. Tourist towns generate waste loads far above their resident population, and the Gram Panchayat or municipality carries the cost. Getting a large share of facilities segregating waste and managing greywater on their own premises is the only realistic way to keep a high-footfall destination clean.

Help and grievance redressal

• District SGLR committee, chaired at the district level under the District Collector, decides ratings and handles disputes over scores.
• Sub Divisional Magistrate convenes the Verification Sub-Committee that physically inspects facilities.
• District Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen) cell handles technical questions on faecal sludge, greywater and solid waste standards.
• Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation publishes the rating booklet and technical notes at swachhbharatmission.ddws.gov.in.

For the wider mission this rating sits inside, see the guides to Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen) and GOBARdhan on this site.

How to check your Swachhata Green Leaf Rating status

There is no central online tracker that shows every facility's file status, since SGLR runs through district and sub-divisional committees rather than a single national portal. An applicant has to follow up through the same offline chain the application moved through.

1. Check with the local administration office where the self-assessment form was first submitted (the district Swachh Bharat Mission Grameen cell or the tehsil/block office that received it). Ask for the file reference or date of submission you were given at intake.
2. Ask whether the Verification Sub-Committee has visited the facility yet. If the physical inspection has not happened, the file is still with the Sub Divisional Magistrate's office and no rating can be assigned until that visit is done.
3. If the visit is complete, ask whether the SDM has forwarded the verified score to the district level committee. This is the step where most delay happens, since the SDM's office consolidates reports from several facilities before forwarding.
4. Contact the district SGLR committee, chaired under the District Collector, for the final decision once the file has reached them. This committee is the only body that assigns the actual leaf rating.
5. Where a state has built a dedicated portal (Uttar Pradesh's sglr.upprd.in is one example), log in with the credentials created at registration to see the status recorded there. Not every state has such a portal, so this step will not apply everywhere.
6. If a facility hears nothing for an extended period after the physical verification, a written follow-up to the district Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen) cell, referencing the submission date and the officer who conducted the inspection, is the practical way to get an update, since there is no SMS or helpline-based status check for this scheme.

Common reasons Swachhata Green Leaf Rating applications are rejected or fail to qualify

Scoring below 50% in any one of the three heads. The rating rules do not allow strength in one area to compensate for weakness in another. A facility can score well on solid waste management and greywater handling and still fail outright if its faecal sludge management score falls under 40 out of 80. The fix is to treat the three heads as three separate pass conditions and address the weakest one first, not to average across all three.

Total score below 100 out of 200. Even a facility that clears the 50% floor in every head can still fall short of certification if its combined total does not reach 100. This typically happens to facilities that score just above the minimum on all three heads. Improving any one head meaningfully, most often solid waste segregation since it is the cheapest to fix, is usually enough to cross the threshold.

No evidence to back the self-assessment claims. A self-assessment form that states waste is segregated and composted, without desludging receipts, segregation records or photographs to support it, gives the Verification Sub-Committee nothing to confirm on site. Verification is a physical inspection against the claimed score, so unsupported claims are marked down rather than taken on trust.

Septic tank or sludge disposal that fails inspection on the ground. An overflowing, unlined or undersized tank, or sludge disposal into open ground rather than through an authorised operator, is the most common hard failure under faecal sludge management. This cannot be fixed on paper; it requires actual civil work or a proper desludging contract before reapplying.

Greywater draining into a drain, road or open area instead of a soak pit or treatment arrangement. Facilities that have solved solid waste and toilet sludge but never built a soak pit for kitchen and bathroom wastewater lose a large share of the 40 greywater marks for this single gap.

Applying in a district where SGLR has not been rolled out. Since the district and sub-divisional committees have to be constituted before any assessment can be verified, a self-assessment submitted in a district without an active committee simply has no body to process it. Checking rollout status with the district administration before applying avoids this dead end.

Registration or ownership documents that do not match the facility being assessed. A homestay registered under one name or category but assessed under another, or a facility without any tourism department registration or trade licence on file, can be held up at the documentation check before the physical verification is even scheduled.

A facility that fails to qualify is not permanently barred: after correcting the specific gap identified during verification (usually the sludge or greywater arrangement), it can redo the self-assessment and request a fresh inspection.