(Image source from: BJP CMs lacks interest in Swachh Bharat?})
Now the political foes of Narendra Modi are paying interest in his flagship mission Swachh Bharat while his own clan being lackluster.
The third meeting held in Vidhan Soudha in Bengaluru to finalize the implementation of the Swachh Bharat mission is attended by all the three Congress Chief Ministers’ sub-group. However, the ruling party Chief Ministers of Maharashtra (Devendra Fadnavis), Sikkim (Pawan Kumar Chamling), Delhi (Arvind Kejriwal), West Bengal (Mamata Banerjee), Bihar (Nitesh Kumar), and Haryana (Manohar Lal Khattar) states gave the meeting a miss.
In fact, the meeting was supposed to be attended by a sub-group of 10 chief ministers from various states in India.
The group, chaired by Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister and NDA ally N Chandrababu Naidu, is planning just one more meeting in New Delhi before presenting its report to the PM by August 15.
Karnataka's chief minister Siddaramaiah, who made the opening remarks at the meet, made no bones about his support for the program, though he had earlier declined to chair this sub-group, as proposed by Modi. Siddaramaiah said: "Our government supports the vision of the Honorable Prime Minister of India in the Swachh Bharat Mission with the objective to achieve universal sanitation coverage, improved cleanliness and make India open defecation-free by 2019."
Harish Rawat of Uttarakhand and Lal Thankawla of Mizoram also endorsed the mission and its importance.
The mission is part of the NITI (National Institute for Transforming India) Aayog`s initiative to clean up the country by 2019, as a fitting tribute to Mahatma Gandhi on his 150th birth anniversary. Gandhi was born on October 2, 1869.
Niti Aayog chief executive Sindhushree Khuller and Rural Development Secretary Saraswathi Prasad also participated in the meeting to finalize the report to be submitted to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who also is the Niti Aayog chairman, for budgetary support and a road map to achieve the mission`s objectives.
The sub-group`s first meeting, held on April 30 in New Delhi, discussed the needs of the mission such as best technologies and best practices available in the country and overseas to implement the ambitious mission on a massive scale.
The second meeting was held on May 19 at Chandigarh, where six chief ministers of non-Bharatiya Janata Party states, including Karnataka, were absent.
Modi launched the mission on Gandhi Jayanti last year in Delhi.
- Manohar. M
