Cleanest Indian Railways stations revealed: Full list here
Anyone who's traveled extensively by train will inevitably know that cleanliness isn't the Indian Railways' biggest forte. Yet, to promote cleanliness, the Indian Railways, in partnership with the Quality Council of India (QCI), has, for the past two years, been releasing lists of its cleanest stations. This year, Rajasthan's Jodhpur and Marwar stations have topped in their respective categories. Here is the complete list.
This year's survey covered 407 railway stations across India
The survey was started in 2016 with the aim of ranking A1 and A category railway stations on the basis of cleanliness standards. The Indian Railways claims that since the start of the 'Swachh Rail, Swachh Bharat' survey, the average cleanliness of Indian railway stations have gone up. Notably, this year, the survey covered 407 railway stations across India.
Why category A1 and A stations only?
Insofar as the Indian Railways' revenue is concerned, category A1 and category A stations contribute around 80% of the Railways' total passenger revenue. Hence, they were chosen.
Details about the evaluation process for the survey
The QCI survey is a four-part survey that evaluates stations based on process evaluation, direct observation, citizen feedback, and station master interviews. For this year's survey, feedback from over 120,000 passengers was taken into account, data was collected on a real-time basis, and a 24*7 control room tracked daily progress of stations, said the Indian Railways.
Last year's absentees are this year's toppers
Among category A1 stations, Jodhpur, Jaipur, Tirupati, Vijayawada, Delhi's Anand Vihar Terminal, Secunderabad Jn., Bandra, Hyderabad, Bhubaneswar, and Vishakhapatnam comprised the top 10, respectively. Marwar, Phulera, Warangal, Udaipur, Jaisalmer, Nizamabad, Barmer, Manchiryal, Mysore, and Bhilwara respectively made up the category A top 10. Interestingly, neither Jodhpur, nor Marwar featured in last year's top 10, when Vishakhapatnam and Beas topped A1 and A categories respectively.
Major stations like Howrah, Varanasi, etc. among dirtiest stations
Mathura (UP), Kalyan (Maharashtra), Gwalior (MP), Gaya (Bihar), Howrah (WB), Muzaffarpur (Bihar), Varanasi (UP), Jhansi (UP), Bareilly (UP), and Bhagalpur (Bihar) were the dirtiest A1 category stations respectively. Meanwhile, Shahganj (UP), Phaphund (UP), Sasaram Jn. (Bihar), New Farakka (WB), Ayodhya (UP), Jagadhri (Haryana), Adarsh Nagar (Delhi), Sagauli Jn. (Bihar), Nagercoil (TN), and Faridabad (Haryana) made the category A bottom 10 respectively.
North-Western Railway topped zonal cleanliness rankings
In terms of zones, 10 among the Railways' 16 zones showed 10-20% improvement compared to last year, while four zones showed over 20% improvement in scores. In terms of ranking, North-Western Railway, South-Central Railway, East Coast Railway, South-East-Central Railway, and Western Railway comprised the top five zones in terms of cleanliness. North-Central Railway was ranked last among all the 16 zones.
