Churu figures in top 10 clean districts in plains

NEW DELHI/ JAIPUR: Churu is among the top 10 cleanest districts in plains, according to the first-ever survey of rural areas across the country.
The survey was conducted by Quality Council of India (QCI) on behalf of the sanitation ministry covering nearly 70,000 household across 2,530 villages. It was released by drinking water and sanitation minister Narendra Singh Tomar on Thursday .The report has ranked districts under two categories ­ districts in north-east and hill states and districts in plains.
Speaking to TOI on the findings of the survey , Churu collector Lalit Gupta said: “We have done a lot to make our rural areas open defecation-free (ODF). Recently , an intra-district survey was conducted, and soon a state verification will be done on the same to declare Churu's rural area as ODF“. Overall (among 75 districts in both plains and hills), Mandi in Himachal Pradesh emerged the cleanest followed by Sindhudurg in Maharashtra. In the survey , Mandi got 98.4 out of 100 marks while Sindhudurg got a score of 96.8.

Interestingly , while nine out of top 10 districts in the hill states are from Himachal Pradesh and Sikkim, in plain areas, eight of the top ranking 10 are from Maharashtra and Bengal. Gurgaon ranked 40 among the 53 districts in the plain areas.

The three-month-long survey and ranking was done based on four indicators ­ percentage of households having access to safe toilets and using them, percentage of household having no litter around, cleanliness around public places and households having no stagnant water around.
The survey report shows while toilet coverage is better and there is negligible littering around individual houses, litter was found in more than 50% of public places surveyed both in hill and other districts. Littering in public places is a major issue not just in rural but urban areas as well.
“We covered most aspects of Swachh Bharat mission and not just availability and usage of toilets. We also found how usage of safe toilets is over 90%, which is encouraging,“ sanitation secretary Parameswaran Iyer said.
Tomar said the intention behind making this survey report public is to have greater competition among states and districts to make them cleaner.
The sanitation ministry also released the ranking of 26 states based on the survey done by NSSO last year, which took into account percentage of households having sanitary toilets and using them. While Sikkim topped the list, Jharkhand came last in the ranking.
In the past one year, things have somewhat changed. According to the latest data of sanitation ministry , Gujarat has improved its performance to enter the list of top 10 states as far as coverage of toilets is concerned. It ranked number 14 in NSSO survey . Similarly, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana and Uttarakhand have also improved their performance.

On the other hand, rankings of Odisha and Bihar have worsened and they are in the bottom of the list of 31 states and Union Territories.
Till now the urban development ministry has come out with two such rankings of municipal areas.