The Swach Bharath Mission officials of the Central government have declared the Telangana as the first state in Open Defecation Free (ODF) states in the country.
Of the total 14,200 villages, as many as 13,737 (96.74 percent) were declared open defecation-free.
The Centre has asked the states to upload their initiatives taken to make the villages ODF and following the information supplied by the Telangana government officials, the Swach Bharath Mission officials announced the first rank to Telangana state followed by Tamilnadu, Kerala, Uttarakhand, Harayana, and other states.
The country has got 5,82,903 villages, only 26,138 villages were declared ODF and of them, the villages of Telangana are 13,737 that accounting for 52 percent of villages declared by the Central government.
In the next step, to be among the top in the ODF list, the state government needs to construct toilets, collect garbage from house to house in villages, segregate of wet and dry garbage in dumping yards, and encourage people to opt for water harvesting pits.
Responding to the achievement, Panchayat Raj minister Mr Errabelli Dayakar Rao said it was possible due to Palle Pragathi program conceived by chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao and thanked the field level state of Panchayat Raj and Rural Development departments. He also thanked the elected representatives of respective villages.