10 heritage sites to be developed

The government on Tuesday announced 10 new iconic places which would be developed as cleanliness role models under the “Swachh Bharat Mission”.

The new places include Gangotri, Yamunotri, the Church and Convent of St. Francis of Assissi and the Somnath temple in Gujarat.

Besides these, the other places in the list are Mahakaleshwar Temple in Ujjain, Adi Shankaracharya’s abode Kaladi in Ernakulam, Gomateshwar in Shravanbelgola, Baijnath Dham in Devghar, Gaya Tirth in Bihar and the Charminar in Hyderabad.

These will be the second batch of 10 iconic places which will be developed under the Swachh Bharat Mission.

The 10 iconic places which were chosen in phase one were Ajmer Sharif Dargah, CST Mumbai, Golden Temple in Amritsar, Kamakhya Temple of Assam, Varanasi’s Maikarnika ghat, Meenakshi temple of Madurai, Mata Vaishno Devi, Katra, Jagannath Temple of Puri, the Taj Mahal, Agra, and the Tirupati temple, Tirumala.

The decision to choose new places was taken at the second quarterly review meeting of the swachh iconic places (SIP), an initiative of the ministry of drinking water and sanitation under Swachh Bharat Mission which was held in the Vaishno Devi Shrine in Katra.

At the meeting rural development minister Narendra Tomar highlighted the progress made under Swachh Bharat Mission and said the country has made fast and remarkable progress with sanitation coverage increasing to 64 per cent with 1.92 lakh villages becoming open defecation free (ODF). Jammu and Kashmir has declared Reasi an ODF block.