The Delhi Pradesh Congress Committee (DPCC) on Wednesday said that the Centre was using the Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) merely as a “photo-op and photo-shop” to garner publicity for the Prime Minister, adding that a huge percentage of the money allocated to the project was being used on personal publicity.
DPCC spokesperson Sharmistha Mukherjee said: “The primary objective of the Swachh Bharat Mission was to eliminate manual scavenging and open defecation, but despite that, six deaths happened in Delhi last week while doing manual scavenging.”
She said that though some government agencies claim that Delhi has been made open defecation free, the practice was an “everyday scene for those who travel by train in the Capital”.
The DPCC pointed out that if manual scavenging could not be eliminated in the Capital even after four years since the mission began, “one could only imagine what the condition is in the rest of the country”. Ms. Mukherjee said that merely making toilets was not enough and that proper water supply, cleanliness and safety must be ensured. The Congress leader cited the incident where a girl was raped in Vasant Kunj when she had gone to the community toilet.
Ms. Mukherjee said that the Central Financial Assistance earmarked for Delhi for the mission period (2014-19) was ₹349.76 crore, but no funds were released after the financial year 2015-16. She said no funds under any component of SBM (Urban) could be claimed from the Union Ministry of Urban Development for financial years 2016-17, 2017-18 and 2018-19 due to non-submission of utilisation certificates of funds by Delhi and it would therefore lapse.