New Delhi: The government has declared 362 towns and cities in 15 states free of open defecation, with Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra topping the chart and Bengal scoring a duck.
The Swachh Bharat Abhiyan aims to make the whole of India open-defecation-free by 2019.
In Gujarat, 167 urban local bodies have been provided with open-defecation-free certificates, followed by 91 in Andhra Pradesh and 70 in Maharashtra. (See chart)
He said that under the ministry’s protocol, a ward or a city first declares itself open-defecation-free; then the state informs the ministry, which gets the claim verified through a third party.
This third party is the Quality Council of India, set up by the government in partnership with industry to operate the country’s accreditation structure.
Experts from this body carry out multiple inspections at different times of the day on at least five places in each zone in a city or town. These places must include a slum, a school, a public area like a market or a religious place, a residential area, and a bus stand or railway station.
The ministry also undertook an audit of toilets in urban areas from November 16 to 30 to ensure they were functional and fully used.
State governments and civic bodies were asked to reach out to community representatives for an effective audit of both household and community toilets. They were asked to check for all deficiencies, including the unavailability of water.