None from Gujarat among India’s top 15 clean railway stations

The Swachhta rankings report was released by Union Railways minister Piyush Goyal in New Delhi on October 2, on the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti. On the same day, Prime Minister Narendra Modi who was present in Ahmedabad spoke about Bapu’s message on cleanliness.

The Indian Railways released Swachhta rankings for two kinds of railway stations — non-suburban (NS) with long distance stations and suburban stations used for passenger trains. As many as 720 stations were ranked in the NS category and 100 railway stations (none in Gujarat) have been ranked in the suburban category.

Swachhta rankings

Two railway stations of Gujarat that came closest to the Top rank holders in NS category are Udhna and Surat stations placed at 16th and 18th rank on the Swachhta index, followed by Vadodara station at 90th rank, Jamnagar at 103rd and Gandhidham at 110th rank.

Jaipur and Jodhpur railway stations of North Western Railways in Rajasthan have been rewarded first and second rank in the list with total scores of 931.75 and 927.19.

The rankings are a part of ‘Swachh Rail, Swachh Bharat’ campaign of the Indian Railways, launched on October 2, 2014. According to the officials of the Indian Railways, the rankings were done in an effort to periodically monitor the progress of cleanliness campaign and promote healthy competition between railway stations.

To measure the cleanliness index at 720 railway stations across India, a survey was carried out by Quality Council of India, where the assessors checked the cleanliness in parking area, main entry, main platform, foot overbridge and waiting room including toilets and drinking water booths.

Speaking to The Indian Express, a senior official with the Ahmedabad Railway division said, “In the wake of the released report, steps are being taken to ensure that we improve our performance next year with consistent cleanliness programs and tree plantation drives.”

The Swachhta rankings, including green score, comes ahead of the proposed Bullet Train project (Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Rail Corridor) with stoppages in Surat, Bharuch, Vado-dara, Anand, Ahmedabad and Sabarmati stations. Among these proposed stations, Ahmedabad received zero, Vadodara 3.8, Bharuch 0.3, Surat zero and Ana-nd received 2.3, out of 5, when it comes to green cover score.

The Western Railways performed poorly in the NS category with only nine railway stations being featured in the Top 200 list with Udhna, Surat, Vadodara, Ratlam (Madhya Pradesh) Jamnagar, Gandhidham, New Bhuj, Veraval and Dahod — in that order. When it comes to suburban category, the Western Railways performed better with suburban stations such as Andheri, Virar, Naigaon, Kandivli (all in Maharashtra) respectively being ranked as Top 4 in the list of 100. However, in the overall rankings, WR has dropped to 10th rank as compared to 5th rank in 2018.

Speaking to The Indian Express, Ravindra Bhakar, the spokesperson for Western Railways said, “Our performance has not deteriorated but scattered due to the bifurcation of suburban and NS railway stations in the ranking process this year. We have performed exceptionally well when it comes to suburban stations and even Udhna railway station in Surat has shown improvement. We definitely need to pull up our socks when it comes to NS or long distance railway stations and we will soon takes step to improve our ranking over there.”

The Indian Railways also released a ‘Green’ score card to rank railway stations as per their efficiency towards curbing pollution and waste management.

According to the released report, the methodology included allotting marks as per green cover (maximum 5), liquid waste management (maximum 25), solid waste management (maximum 30), energy management (30) and ISO and green certification (10) to the railway stations with equal weightage to process evaluation, direct observation and public feedback.

In this ranking as well, railway stations in Gujarat have scored poor with stations such as Ahme-dabad, Bhavnagar, Dewas, Dwa-rka, Kim, Kosamba and Surat sco-ring zero in ‘green cover’ marks.