Delhi, surprisingly has emerged as the safest city in India, according to a Gurgaon based think-tank.

This, despite the Delhi Police admitting that the number of crimes had gone up by 1.42 percent in 2009.

A report brought out by the Institute for Competitiveness claims that Delhi is safer than Bhopal, Bangalore, Mumbai and chennai, in that order. And definitely more so than Gurgaon and Noida, which rank 36th and 37th on the list of 37 cities. Both the cities lie within the national capital region, fringing Delhi's southern hem.

Dehradun, the report says, is one of the most unsafe cities in the country figuring at the third spot from the bottom.

According to reports, 2,310 crimes were registered in Dehradun last year where as Delhi saw a whopping 47,072 cases registered.

However, the city saw a fall in the rate of crime per lakh population in the last year. According to data from police sources, the figure fell to 277.11 in 2009 from 286.32 in 2008.