30% toilets built till 2013-14 defunct: CAG

Says around Rs 10,000 crore has been spent on construction of household toilets during the same period

Around 30 per cent of individual toilets constructed under the Total Sanitation Campaign, which was later renamed Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan during 2009-10 to 2013-14 were non-functional because of poor quality, incomplete structure and improper maintenance, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India (CAG) said.

The auditor said while around Rs 10,000 crore was spent on construction of household toilets during the same period, 30 per cent of the same was not usable due to weakness at the planning level.

"The Centre needs to converge the sanitation effort with ongoing related programmes like Rural Health Mission for effective independent evaluation," the CAG said in its report.

Against the objective of constructing 42.36 million individual households latrines for below poverty line families and 46.97 million latrines for above poverty line families, only 52.15 per cent and 44.18 per cent toilets, respectively, were constructed in the 53 districts spread across eight states selected for the audit.

The CAG report also found that only 48 per cent of the funds demanded by the states were released by the Union government during the period under consideration. The auditor found the unspent amount on an annual basis to be varying between 40 and 56 per cent during the said period.

It also said the ministry of rural development spent only a meagre amount allocated for monitoring and evaluation under the programme during the five years.

The CAG said while the Prime Minister launched Swachh Bharat on October 2, 2014 to make India an open defecation-free country by 2019, earlier, similar targets were set for 2012, revised to 2017 and again set for 2022.

The first structured scheme for rural sanitation, the Central Rural Sanitation Programme, was launched in 1986.

Total Sanitation Campaign was started with the main objective of providing access to toilets to all by 2012 and providing sanitation facilities to all schools and anganwadis by March 2013.

In 2012, the campaign was further transformed in Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan with the modified objective of achieving the vision of Nirmal Bharat by 2022, thus effectively shifting the sanitation targets by nearly a decade, the report noted.