10 more tourist places in India will be ‘Swachh Iconic Places’

Golden Temple, Amritsar, Punjab

As part of their Social Responsibility policy, corporates and public sector undertakings are planning to adopt 10 more tourist places to make them ‘Swach Iconic Places’

IOC, GAIL, Idea Cellular, AAI, ONGC, Hindustan Zinc Ltd., NTPC, NALCO, NHPC and SBI are the institutions came forward to adopt the tourist places. They will pick one or two each to make them clean tourist places.

Shree Jagannath Temple, Puri, Odisha

This programme is initiated realizing the fact that most of our famous tourist destinations attract lakhs of tourists and pilgrims every year, but the cleanliness and basic amenities are often ignored.

‘The Swachh Iconic Places’, an initiative under the ‘Swachh Bharat Mission’ of Government of India, aiming at sustainable development in tourism sector government. It is a special clean-up initiative focused on selected iconic heritage, spiritual and cultural places in the country.

Ajmer Sharif Dargah, Ajmer, Rajasthan

The initiative is being coordinated by the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation in association with the Ministry of Urban Development, Ministry of Culture, Ministry of Tourism and the concerned State governments.

Earlier Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s has exhorted the corporates and public sector undertakings to  participate in ‘Swachh Bharat Abhiyan’ and ‘Operation Clean’ project. Accepting this requests so many corporates and leading Public Sector Units (PSUs) came forward to support the mission and to contribute towards its success.

20 such iconic tourist places have already been cleaned up and provided with improved amenities by these institutions. These include Thajmahal, Agra; Puri Jaganath Temple, Odisha; Ajmer Sharif Dargah, Rajastan; Golden Temple, Panjab etc. Now they have assured to adopt 10 more iconic places and urge for a plastic ban at all these places.

Construction of bio-toilets, underground waste collection bins, installation of drinking water and ATMs, provide sanitation, clean up their surroundings, etc have already been initiated in these places to make them ‘swachh’

This programme of making the tourist places India to be clean and tidy has already been showing results in the form of improved ranking in Travel and Tourism Competitive Index.