Swachh Bharat Mission survey finds North Block, South Block and rashtrapati Bhawan fare poorly in cleanliness

NEW DELHI: Prime Minister Narendra Modi might have taken the broom and initiated his Swachch Bharat dream but his own office is housed in a government building showing poor cleanliness. A cleanliness survey conducted by Central Public Works Department has found that South Block, North Block and Rashtrapati Bhawan – which house the most powerful men in our country – have very poor overall cleanliness and half of the government buildings rank higher than them in the exercise.

In the overall ranking of 29 government buildings from 1 to 11, Rashtrapati Bhawan and South Block have finished on the sixth place with half of the buildings cleaner than the two. North Block finishes on the eighth position with only seven buildings ranking below it. Hyderabad House, Vigyan Bhawan and Jawaharlal Nehru Bhawan are the cleanest government buildings in the capital. Krishi Bhawan and Shastri Bhawan, which house most of the government ministries and ministers’ offices, are the dirtiest lacking basic sanitation infrastructure.

CPWD had conducted the survey in 29 government buildings screening their overall cleanliness for giving them Swachch Bharat Mission ratings. The survey was done on three parameters – sanitation infrastructure, cleanliness and availability of dustbins. Hyderabad House, which hosts Prime Minister-level meetings and dialogues, has topped the list scoring a perfect 20 alongwith Vigyan Bhawan and Jawaharlal Nehru Bhawan. The maximum weightage was given to sanitation infrastructure (10 points), followed by 8 points to cleanliness and 2 points for availability of dustbins.

Sardar Patel Bhawan on Parliament Street, which houses the panchayati raj ministry and ministry of statistics and programme implementation, finishes a close second with 18 points. What is shocking is that the most crowded government buildings – Shastri Bhawan and Krishi Bhawan – are the dirtiest. They finish at the bottom of the list of 29 buildings scoring the least points 8 out of 20. The two buildings scored very poor in sanitation infrastructure and overall cleanliness.

Vayu Bhawan, Vigyan Bhawan Annexe, National Museum, NITI Aayog, Nirwachan Sadan, UPSC building have fared better than the North and South Blocks.
RATINGS

Rank Building

1 Hyderabad House

1 Vigyan Bhawan

1 Jawaharlal Nehru Bhawan

2 Sardar Patel Bhawan

3 New CGA Building

4 Vayu Bhawan

4 Vigyan Bhawan Anne

4 National Museum

4 NAI Building

4 NITI Aayog

4 Nirvachan Sadan

5 UPSC Building

5 Sena Bhawan

5 I P Bhawan

6 Rashtrapati Bhawan

6 South Block

6 Shram Shakti Bhawan

6 Transport Bhawan

6 Janpath Bhawan

7 Jaipur House

8 Nirman Bhawan

8 North Block

8 C R Building

8 Udyog Bhawan

9 AGCR building

10 Drum Shaped Building

10 Lok Nayak Bhawan

11 Krishi Bhawan

11 Shastri Bhawan