NEW DELHI: Sikkim is the cleanest state in India and Jharkhand is the worst in terms of rural sanitation, as per the results of a survey conducted by the National Sample Survey Office [NSSO).
The findings were released by Rural Development Minister Narendra Singh Tomar in New Delhi on Thursday.
Apart from Sikkim, the states in the top ten cleanest list are Kerala, Mizoram, Himachal Pradesh, Nagaland, Haryana, Punjab, Uttarakhand, Manipur and Meghalaya.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Gujarat was ranked a middling 14th. The states that came the worse off were Chattisgarh, Odisha, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Jammu and Kashmir followed by Jharkhand.
The NSSO conducted the survey in May-June 2015 covering 73,176 households in 3,788 villages across the country. The ranking was given on the basis of the percentage of households having toilets, either household or community toilets.
Sikkim scored 98.2 per cent on a scale of 100 while Jharkhand, scored 17.7 According to the report, Sikkim has 99.9 per cent sanitation coverage, followed by Himachal Pradesh (97.11 per cent) and Kerala (96.35 per cent). Bihar is at the bottom with 25.16 per cent coverage.
Odisha (32.79 per cent), Jammu & Kashmir (33.35 per cent), Jharkhand (40.52 per cent), Telangana (42.13 per cent), Uttar Pradesh (44.15 per cent), Andhra Pradesh (47.14 per cent) and Madhya Pradesh (47.48 per cent) are among states that fared poorly.
The survey was done in two parts. In the first, 26 states were ranked on the basis of 2015 NSSO data; in the second part, 75 districts covering 70,000 households were ranked for cleanliness.
Sindhudurg in Maharashtra emerged as the cleanest district in the country.
The survey covered 53 districts located in the plains and 22 in hill states and the North-East.
Among the other cleanest districts in the plains were Nadia (West Bengal), Satatra (Maharashtra), Midnapore East (West Bengal) and Kolhapur (Maharashtra).
Dungarpur, Pali and Ajmer in Rajasthan were found to be the laggards - all three ranked in the bottom five. As many as 13 out of the 53 districts chosen were from Gujarat. But three districts in PM’s home state — Ahmedabad, Anand and Panchmahal -lagged on all four parameters.