'Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan' to be 'Swachh Bharat Mission'

The union cabinet Wednesday gave its approval for restructuring of "Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan" into "Swachh Bharat Mission".

The programme is aimed at creating a clean India by 2019 with people's participation.

"The cabinet has approved the Swachh Bharat Mission," union Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad said here after a cabinet meeting chaired by Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

Prasad said the mission will be launched Oct 2, the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.

The prime minister has been striving to make the mission a mass movement.

The cabinet also approved a "Swachh Bharat Mission" for urban areas, which will be part of a joint "Swachh Bharat Mission" which has another component for rural areas.

The drinking water and sanitation ministry will implement the programme in rural areas while the urban development ministry will do the same in urban areas.

"The 'Nirmal Bharat Abhiyan' will be restructured into the 'Swachh Bharat Mission' with two sub-missions - 'Swachh Bharat Mission' (rural) and 'Swachh Bharat Mission' (urban). Budgetary provisions for the two sub-missions will be provided separately in the demand for grant of the ministries of drinking water and sanitation (for rural) and ministry of urban development (for urban)," an official statement said.

"If necessary, funds may be provided by re-appropriation or from the contingency fund," it said.

The programme includes elimination of open defecation, conversion of insanitary toilets to pour flush toilets, eradication of manual scavenging, municipal solid waste management, bringing about a behavioural change in people regarding healthy sanitation practices, generating awareness among citizens about sanitation and its linkages with public health, strengthening of urban local bodies to design, execute and operate systems to fulfil these objectives and creating an enabling environment for private sector participation in capital expenditure and operational expenditure.

The urban component of the programme approved Wednesday consists of providing individual household toilets, community and public toilets and municipal solid waste management in all 4,041 statutory towns.

"It would cover 1.04 crore households, provide 2.5 lakh seats of community toilets, 2.6 lakh seats of public toilets and solid waste management facility for all towns. Community toilets will be proposed in residential areas where it is difficult to construct individual household toilets while public toilets will be constructed in designated locations such as tourist places, markets, bus stations, near railway stations and places of public recreation wherever required," the statement added.