In a bizarre turn of events, a lawmaker of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in India’s Madhya Pradesh has cleaned a toilet at a girls' school without any kits in a move he considers the wake-up call for a nationwide cleanliness programme.
A video showing Janardan Mishra doing so in bare hands has been making rounds on the internet.
And this is not the first time he did it. The BJP leader cleaned school privy in February of 2018 and posted videos on Twitter. Before that, he was potted cleaning the streets of Rewa, his constituency.
Sharing the latest video on his Twitter handle on Thursday evening, Mishra said that under the “Seva Pakhwada” cleanliness campaign, currently being run by BJP Yuva Morcha, the youth wing of the ruling party, cleaned the toilets of Khatkhari Girls School.
According to media reports, the youth wing of the BJP is running a cleanliness drive from September 17, which is Prime Minister Narendra Modi's birthday, to October 2, the birthday of Mahatma Gandhi.
पार्टी द्वारा चलाये जा रहे सेवा पखवाड़ा के तहत युवा मोर्चा के द्वारा बालिका विद्यालय खटखरी में वृक्षारोपण कार्यक्रम के उपरांत विद्यालय के शौचालय की सफाई की।@narendramodi @JPNadda @blsanthosh @ChouhanShivraj @vdsharmabjp @HitanandSharma pic.twitter.com/138VDOT0n0
— Janardan Mishra (@Janardan_BJP) September 22, 2022
As part of this initiative, Mishra recently visited the school to participate in a tree plantation drive.
During his visit, the BJP MP noticed the unhygienic condition of the toilet at the girls' school and decided to clean it with his bare hands and all by himself.
In December last year, the central Indian state’s Energy Minister Pradhuman Singh Tomar cleaned the toilet of a government school in Madhya Pradesh’s Gwalior to spread the message of cleanliness.
India had launched the Swachh Bharat Abhiyaan (Clean India Mission) on October 2, 2014. Under the mission, all villages, panchayats, districts, states and union territories in India declared themselves "open-defecation free" by October 2, 2019, the 150th birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi.
As part of this project, more than 100 million toilets were built in rural India, according to official data.