NEW DELHI: In the past one year, not even a single household toilet has been built in Delhi, which was the nerve centre of NDA's Swachh Bharat Mission launched by PM Narendra Modi. The capital has achieved this dubious distinction despite all seven Lok Sabha MPs being from BJP and even when all three municipalities are controlled by the saffron party.

While Union urban development minister M Venkaiah Naidu preferred passing the buck on to the wide gap between the three municipalities and the AAP government at a press meet, he told the top city administrators in the evening that the public perception about cleanliness in the capital is "still adverse" and needs to be changed at the earliest.

Sources said Naidu told municipal commissioners to ensure proper deployment and monitoring of safai workers saying the "output is not commensurate with the number." Officials told the minister that due to non-availability of land in unauthorized colonies and slum clusters, municipal bodies are focusing on construction of community and public toilets instead of constructing individual household toilets. Naidu has suggested to the chief secretary to set up a committee to survey such areas for availability of land.

Naidu suggested examining the Japanese model of burning municipal solid waste without environmental consequences in view of the limited availability of land for dumping such waste.

