Salem Division, Southern Railway, secures top honors in the ranking of Clean Railway Stations all over Indian Railways

As announced in the Railway Budgets by the Hon’ble Minister for Railways Sri Suresh Prabhu, during 2015 and 2016, series of measures were undertaken to achieve the Hon’ble Prime Minister’s  ‘Swachch Bharath’ vision to achieve the goal of Clean India by 2^nd October, 2019, the 150^th Birthday of Mahatma Gandhi. 

As a part of these measures, a survey has been conducted by Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) in 75 A1 category stations and 332 A Category stations (totaling to 407 stations), soliciting feedback from the passengers in each station. The non-suburban statons that have an annual  income of more than Rs. 50 crores are categorized as ‘A1’ category and those that have annual income between Rs.6 crores and Rs.50 crores are categorized as ‘A’ Category stations. 

Passengers were asked to rate the cleanliness of the stations on 40 different cleanliness parameters, on a scale of 5 where 1 is ‘poor’ and 5 is ‘excellent’.  Finally all weighted parameter scores were added to arrive at a final rating score on a scale of 0 to 1000, as under:

Based on the passenger feedback on the cleanliness of the stations and the analysis thereof, all the 407 major stations were provided rankings, as per the preliminary report submitted by IRCTC. In the A-1 Category of stations list, Coimbatore junction of Salem Division, Southern Railway has been rated as the 13^th Cleanest Station, among the 75  A-1 category stations all over India.

In the A Category Stations, in the all India rankings on cleanliness, Salem Junction of Salem Division has been rated as the 7^th Cleanest Railway Station by the passengers, with 2 more stations of Salem Division in the top 20 cleanest stations’ list, viz. Erode junction has been rated as 11^th and Mettupalayam station as 18^th Cleanest A Category Station in all India rankings.

Sri Shubhranshu, Divisional Railway Manager, Salem, has said that this was the result of the relentless campaigns carried out by the Salem Division during the past one year under the ‘Swachch Bharat’ campaigns in all the stations under Salem Division and the involvement of various NGOs, students and volunteers from the Schools and Colleges who participated in the campaigns, etc. He further said that Salem Division has designed big Dust Bins to be placed both in the platforms and various points of the Railway Stations to enable the passengers to use them to dispose of the garbage and thus avoid littering in platforms and tracks. He also added that specially designed disposable garbage bags have been fitted in the vestibule area in between the train coaches, to gather the garbage that will be replaced in all major stations of Salem Division, because vestibules  in trains have been found to be the place where edible wastes were getting dumped.

Sri Shubranshu further stated that the passengers and all stake holders in stations were cooperative in helping the Salem Division administration in keeping the railway premises clean and solicited their continued cooperation in maintaining the stations in a clean condition.