Modi govt allocates Rs 1700 crores for Swachh Bharat Abhiyan

The government has made an allocation of Rs 1700 crores for effective implementation of the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan, which was launched by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on 2 October, 2014.

However a  The Times of India  report said that it is unlikely that this allocation will be used in the two remaining months of the current financial year because the states still had to submit their plans and schemes to implement the project.

This development comes after the World Bank announced on 21 January that it would commit $1 billion towards the Swachh Bharat campaign.

World Bank’s country director in India Onno Ruhl said the World Bank is considering large sums of financing for that.

“The government has asked us at the highest level to prepare this with speed. So, we have teams here working flat out day and night to support.

“Given the fact that we haven’t fully completed our discussion, I wouldn’t want to commit to an amount. However it will be no less than $1 billion. So, it is a significant amount,” he told CNBC-TV18.

Apart from the Rs 1700 crore allocation and the World Bank support, the government plans to levy a cess on telecom services to create a corpus to fund the Swachh Bharat drive.

In a legal advice given to department of telecom in January, the attorney general was learned to have argued against levying Swachh Bharat Cess on telecom spectrum as it would be illegal. But he also suggested that it could be imposed on telecom services by amending the Finance Act.

(With inputs from PTI)