New Delhi: Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday launched a week-long garbage-free India campaign in the run up to Independence Day and asserted that the Swachh Bharat Mission has been a big support in the fight against coronavirus.
He also launched the Rashtriya Swachhata Kendra, an interactive experience centre on the Swachh Bharat Mission at the Gandhi Smriti and Darshan Samiti at Rajghat.
In his speech, Modi urged children, who attended the event, to follow social distancing norms and wear masks to guard against coronavirus.
The ‘Gandagi Mukt Bharat’ drive begins on Saturday and would go on till Independence Day to re-enforce the ongoing campaign on cleanliness and sanitation.
“Imagine the situation if a COVID-19-like pandemic had hit us before 2014. Due to lack of toilets, could we have checked the spread of the infection. Had lockdown been possible when 60 per cent of the population was forced to defecate in open,” the prime minister observed.
Rahul takes a jibe
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi took a dig at Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Saturday over the cleanliness campaign, saying he should begin the “satyagraha” by coming clean about Chinese aggression.
Tagging a tweet by the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) in which Modi urged people to take a pledge to the “garbage quit India” drive, Gandhi said, “Why not! We have to go a step ahead and clean up increasing ‘garbage of falsehood’ in the country.”
“Will the Prime Minister start the satyagraha by telling the country the truth of the Chinese aggression?” he said in a tweet in Hindi.
Gandhi also stepped up his attack against the Centre on the issue of removal of a defence ministry report mentioning Chinese ‘transgressions’, saying this was not a coincidence but the government’s “anti-democracy experiment”. “Whenever the country has gotten emotional, files disappear. Be it Mallya or Rafale, Modi or Choksi,” the tweet said. (PTI)
