New Delhi: Promoting Prime Minister Narendra Modi's flagship Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Initiative), Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MPs including Minister of State (Finance) Anurah Thakur and Hema Malini on Saturday took initiative to clean the Parliament premises. The cleanness drive was also joined by newly appointed Lok Sabha Speaker Om Birla and Defence Minster Rajnath Singh. Birla has organised this cleanness drive and other MPs will do join the initiative that will take place on Saturday and Sunday.

General most of the MP leave Delhi on Friday for their respective constituencies after concluding Parliament session, but this time around they have requested to attend the Swachhata Abhiyaan. Members of Parliament have been allotted different areas for the Abhiyan. Even the holidays of all the cleaning staff of Parliament has been cancelled this time. Apart from MPs of the ruling dispensation, Vice-President Venkiah Naidu and PM Modi himself are expect to join the event.

"It is highly appreciable that the Speaker of the House took initiative to carry out 'Swachh Bharat Abhiyan' on the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi, in Parliament premises. I will go back to Mathura next week and carry out this Abhiyan there as well," Malini said while speaking to reporters outside Parliament.


In the recently tabled Union Budget for 2019-20 fiscal by the Modi government 2.0, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharman decreased the allocation to Swachh Bharat Mission. The government, however, justified the dip in Budget allocation stating that the mission per se has almost ended with most targets till October 2, 2018 already being achieved.

The mission, which also inspired Bollywood to make a movie on the subject of sanitation, would now be undertaken on a back-end mission of solid waste management under a cluster system, a top ministry official had told news agency IANS. The mission was started in 2014. Run by the Government of India, the mission aimed to achieve an "open-defecation free" (ODF) India by October 2, 2019, by constructing 90 million toilets in rural India at a projected cost of Rs 1.96 lakh crore.


For 2019-20 fiscal, the allocation for the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan was cut short by 25 per cent. FM Sitharaman had announced a proposal to expand the mission to achieve 100 per cent solid waste management as its expansion. Sitharaman in her Budget speech had said Swachh Bharat would now be expanded. "I now propose to expand the Swachh Bharat Mission to undertake sustainable solid waste management in every village," she had said.

Watch BJP leaders cleaning Parliament premises under Swachh Bharat Abhiayan: