Sonia's Rae Bareli cleaner than Varanasi

Prime Minister Narendra Modi might have launched the “Swachh Bharat Abhiyan” with much fanfare, but his constituency Varanasi found itself at the bottom when it came to its implementation.

Congress chief Sonia Gandhi's Rae Bareli was way ahead of Varanasi in this regard, though much improvement is still needed. The holy city of Varanasi ranked a lowly 418 among 476 towns surveyed by the Union Urban Development Ministry to study the cleanliness campaign's success.

The towns were surveyed on sanitation practices covering a set of parameters, including the extent of open defecation and solid waste management.

The study gave Varanasi just 3.38 marks out of 20 for open defecation, indicating high prevalence.  On solid waste management too, the it bagged only 6.11 marks out of 22. Altogether, Varanasi got 9.49 out of 42. However, Rae Bareli, which was ranked 240, was much ahead on these parameters. It got 4.38 on open defecation and 10.93 for sewage management. Rae Bareli's total was 15.30. Even the performance of External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj’s Vidisha constituency, which ranked 312, was better compared to Varanasi, with a cumulative score of 13.23.

The scores of these VIP constituencies showed open defecation remains an issue.
Modi had announced the campaign on October 2 — Mahatma Gandhi's birthday — last year with an aim to eliminate open defecation and eradicate manual scavenging, besides building 6.12 crore toilets and achieving scientific solid waste management in 4,041 cities and towns for 30.6 crore people.

Launching the programme, he had invited cricketer Sachin Tendulkar, Congress MP Shashi Tharoor and industrialist Anil Ambani, among others, on social media to join the campaign to popularise it.