Amidst the ongoing cleanliness drive in the capital witnessing the participation of prominent leaders of the Union Cabinet, Delhi Lieutenant Governor (LG) Najeeb Jung today appealed to the people to also participate in the drive as only Government efforts are not enough.
"Just the efforts of the Government are not enough, I appeal to the people of Delhi to come out and visit schools, hospitals to participate in the cleanliness drive," said Jung.
"A clean India was a vision of Mahatma Gandhi; the Government is trying to make that vision come true. The cleanliness drive in Delhi will continue for the full month and the government, municipality, Delhi Government, will make all possible efforts. The drive will go till 2019 and I feel that we will get to see same amount of cleanliness as in the foreign countries," he added.
However, Congress leader Raj Babbar criticized the government saying that for them the cleanliness drive is just getting clicked with Broomsticks.
"NDMC is the cleanest area in the world and it's not good to get the photograph clicked at a place where all the VVIPs stay. There are other cities also like Lucknow, Patna, Ranchi, Agra. In fact there are many such areas in Delhi itself like Seelampur, Laxmi Nagar, etc. but just to get clicked by the media they are posing with the broomstick," said Babbar.
The ongoing cleanliness drive has so far witnessed the participation of prominent leaders from Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government including Union Minister Dr Jitendra Singh, HRD Minister Smriti Irani, Water Resource Minister Uma Bharti, Home Minister Rajnath Singh and Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad.
Last week Railway Minister Sadananda Gowda had also announced of a special cleanliness being carried out at all railway stations across the country on October 2, the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, for which he had also welcomed the ministers and railway employees to voluntarily to visit any railway station and participate in this gigantic programme on that day.
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The cleanliness drive is proposed to be implemented over five years starting from October 2, 2014 in all 4041 statutory towns.
The total expected cost of the programme for over five years is Rs. 62,009 crores, out of which the proposed central assistance will be of Rs. 14,623 crores.
The Delhi Municipal Corporations are also geared up to run a 100-day cleanliness drive under the campaign as the Prime Minister Modi also urged the leaders of various organisations to take part in the drive.
In his Independence Day speech, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had talked of the 'Swachh Bharat' campaign and called for India to be clean by October 2, 2019, Mahatma Gandhi's 150th birth anniversary.