New Delhi: A survey conducted by the Railway Ministry was released based on a passenger comments Surat and Rajkot in Gujarat are among the cleanest stations in India while Mughalsarai in Uttar Pradesh and Pune are among the dirtiest.
Ten interviews per station were completed by the surveyors. They asked the passengers to rate the cleanliness of stations on 40 different parameters.
Lack of sanitation at stations was the biggest area of concern for commuters. lack of stench in the station premises’ was the most important for the passengers, it was followed by “adequate availability of dustbins”.
‘Condition of flooring surface at stages’, ‘cleanliness of stage regions’ and ‘promptness in the cleaning of extremes of dirtiness like nightsoil/vomit’ occupied third position in the list.
The report was released by the Railway Minister on Tuesday which states that Five stations in Gujarat– Rajkot, Jamnagar, Surat, Gandhidham and Ankleshwar are on the list of top 10.
Madhubani, Bakhtiyarpur, Anugrah Narayan, Ara and Sagauli in Bihar are the five filthiest stations.
The station at Bilaspur in Chhattisgarh was third among the 75 A1-category railway stations followed by Solapur and Mumbai Central in Maharashtra, Chandigarh, Bhubaneshwar (Odisha) and Vadodara (Gujarat).
Prabhu said. “The idea is to make the entire rail network clean. This is just the beginning of a process which will actually and eventually bring all stations on a par to a particular standard.”
He said the move is in line with the budget announcement of taking steps to improve the cleanliness at the 8,000 stations in India and take forward the ‘Swachh Rail Swachh Bharat’ mission.
The ministry has issued guidelines to zonal headquarters. The ministry intends to carry out such surveys from time to time to gauge the degrees of improvement across stations and develop a tracking mechanism through an e-platform.