COIMBATORE: A day after Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s road show, Coimbatore City Municipal Corporation (CCMC) officials and BJP leaders contradicted each other regarding who cleaned the trash that was left behind by people who lined up the stretch from Saibaba Colony junction on Mettupalayam Road to RS Puram Post Office junction on the East TV Samy Road.
While CCMC officials said sanitary workers had a tough day cleaning the road, BJP leaders claimed their 150-member team had swept the road clean right after the event ended and that people may have littered the side streets.
The party distributed water bottles, snack packets, shawls, party flags, masks and scarves among others to people gathered at the event. Once the show was over, the workers and people threw away the waste on the road.
CCMC officials said empty water bottles, shawls, paper flags and other garbage was strewn all over the place. Traders in RS Puram and Saibaba Colony said they cleaned place on Tuesday morning.
“When I came in the morning to open my shop which is located in the basement of a commercial complex, I was shocked to see entrance covered in a pile of trash and empty water bottles. We removed over 100 plastic water bottles and other waste and disposed of them as customers wouldn’t walk in a shop that’s welcomed by waste,” D Raja, a shopkeeper from RS Puram told TNIE.
Another trader from Saibaba Colony said that he hired a worker to remove the garbage pile near his store. “People must have some responsibility and not throw waste on the road. They should dispose it safely. No amount of cleaning and blaming would help,” he added.
BJP state president K Annamalai on Tuesday shared a couple of photos on ‘X’ (formerly Twitter) thanking party workers for staying back after the road show to ensure the streets are litter-free. When inquired about it, an official in CCMC West Zone told TNIE, “We don’t know whether BJP workers cleared the garbage. But our sanitary workers indulged in their routine road cleaning and garbage clearing work on Tuesday morning. Apart from the main roads, some of the interior roads were filled with waste and were later cleared by our workers.”
Speaking to TNIE, BJP’s Coimbatore district president, J Rameshkumar said, “We had appointed 150 workers as part of our Swacch Bharath initiative to clean the waste that were thrown on the road after the road show. Our workers completely removed all the garbage from both Mettupalayam Road and East TV Samy Road. People who came for the event may have thrown waste in the interior roads while returning and we were not aware of it.”