Among districts Bhiwani in Haryana is the cleanest even as the second and third best performers’ award were bagged by Jagtial and Nizamabad districts of Telangana. Golaghat district of Assam finished at the bottom of 709 districts, which were ranked in this survey. The two other worst performers were from Bihar – Banka (708 rank) and Katihar (707).
Since Delhi and Chandigarh are fully urbanised UTs, these were not ranked.
The survey report released by President Droupadi Muru on Sunday has ranked states and districts on the basis of their performance attained on qualitative and quantitative parameters and engagement of the rural community in improvement of their sanitation status.
On Saturday, she released the sanitation status of urban areas and the ranking of states and cities were announced. While the housing and urban affairs ministry carries out the swachhta ranking of urban areas, the Jal Shakti ministry conducts the survey of rural areas.
On the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti, which is now celebrated as Swachh Bharat Diwas as well, Murmu also released the status report on “Functionality Assessment of Tap Connections” under the Jal Jeevan Mission. Puducherry received the best performer award under the more than 60% coverage category while Goa was ranked second.
Under the less than 60% coverage category, Tamil Nadu ranked first and Meghalaya came second. Murmu also gave away a special award to the Burhanpur district of Madhya Pradesh for being the first “Har Ghar Jal” certified district. Speaking on the occasion, Murmu said like truth and non-violence, Mahatma Gandhi insisted on cleanliness. She said once Gandhiji had said that if the habit of cleanliness was inculcated in children, from the very beginning, then they would remain conscious of cleanliness throughout their life.
Referring to the achievement in construction of over 11 crore toilets under Swachh Bharat Mission since October 2014, she said this has resulted in changing the behaviour of around 60 crore people.
