The Indian government has emphasized a lot on cleanliness in the country and railway stations are also included in their campaign. Annual surveys are done to keep a track of the cleanliness factor on railway stations and it also increases the competitiveness among the railway staff of various stations.
The railway stations have been classified under the category of A1 and A depending on the income of a station and the number of visitors it gets, not to forget to mention that railways get 80 percent of the passenger revenue through A1 and A stations.
Two stations from Rajasthan, Jodhpur and Marwar have been declared as the cleanest among the major stations of the country.
Piyush Goyal, the railway minister, released the report of the study on Monday and it states that Jodhpur is at the first rank in A1 stations while Marwar emerged the first in the A category. It is a proud moment for North Western Railway zone as both the stations come under this zone.
Jaipur and Tirupati were at the second and third position in the A1 category while Vishakapatnam that ranked first last year slipped to 10th position this year.
In A category, Phulera (Rajasthan) was at the second rank while Warangal (Telangana) was at the third position.
Only Anand Vihar station in New Delhi was able to make a place in the top 10 (5th position) among the major stations of metro cities. The station of national capital maintained its position at 39th spot, the same as the last year.
Here’s the list:
Top 10 A1 Category Stations:
1) Jodhpur
2) Jaipur
3) Tirupati
4) Vijayawada
5) Anand Vihar Terminal
6) Secunderabad Jn
7) Bandra
8) Hyderabad
9) Bhubaneswar
10) Visakhapatnam
Top 10 A Category Stations
1) Marwar
2) Phulera
3) Warangal
4) Udaipur
5) Jaisalmer
6) Nizamabad
7) Barmer
8) Manchiryal
9) Mysore
10) Bhilwara
Piyush Goyal didn’t name the worst station in terms of cleanliness but he did say that north central railway has got the 16th position that is last rank as railways has been categorized into 16 zones.
The top position was secured by north-western railway, while south central railway and east coast railway have secured the second and third ranks, respectively. The study also mentions that there has been an improvement of 9% in top 100 stations and 14% in next 100 in comparison to the last year.
Quality Council of India has been focusing on the cleanliness ranking since it was formed in 2016 and it has resulted in a lot of improvement on the stations in terms of cleanliness.