Modi unveils new sanitation push
A TOTAL OF 90M TOILETS WERE BUILT WITHIN FOUR YEARS, PM SAYS
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Launching new nationwide sanitation campaign, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said yesterday all sections of society and all parts of the country have joined the push for a cleaner India.
Few would have thought that 90 million toilets would be built and 450,000 villages declared open defecation-free (ODF) within four years, he said.
The new Swachhata Hi Seva (“Cleanliness is Service”) campaign will continue until Mahatma Gandhi’s birth anniversary on October 2, Modi said, as a he asked people to rededicate themselves to fulfilling the father of the nation’s dream of a clean India.
‘Historic day’
The premier spoke to groups of people from across the country, as well as several religious figures, Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath and personalities including Amitabh Bachchan and Ratan Tata through videoconference, in which they shared details of their work for the campaign.
Sanitation coverage in India has increased to more than 90 per cent, from 40 per cent in four years, Modi said.
“Did anybody imagine that more than 450 districts would be ODF in four years or that 20 states and union territories would achieve the same status?” he said, calling it a historic day as he launched the fortnight-long campaign.
Adityanath said Uttar Pradesh, the country’s most populous and among its poorest states, would be ODF by October 2, 2018 as per a baseline survey of the Clean India (Swachh Bharat) campaign.
He said that his government was working to ensure that every family has a toilet by October 2019.