Chandigarh railway station among country’s top 10 in cleanliness

The Chandigarh railway station has been ranked sixth in cleanliness in a survey of 75 A1 category railway stations across the country. Stations with annual earnings of more than Rs 60 crore a year are classified as A1. Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC), a subsidiary of the Indian Railways, conducted the survey titled ‘Cleanliness of Railway Stations’ that was released by railway minister Suresh Prabhu in New Delhi on Thursday.

In the region, Jammu Tawi has been ranked 20th with Ludhiana and New Delhi ranked 54th and 55th, respectively. Ambala Cantonment is 56th and Amritsar has bagged the 57th position.

Surat, Rajkot and Bilaspur railway stations bagged the first three positions, respectively. Solapur junction has been ranked fourth with Mumbai Central ranked fifth. The survey was conducted from January 16 to February 5 this year.

Ambala divisional railway manager (DRM) Dinesh Kumar said, “It is a decent ranking. We are working on increasing awareness on cleanliness among commuters. Through CCTV cameras, we keep a check on the cleanliness. We also have sufficient number of dustbins in place.”

The survey was conducted face-to-face with respondents (passengers) asked to fill up a questionnaire that rated cleanliness on 40 parameters relating to infrastructure, improvement in processes and methodology etc. At each of the 75 stations, a sample size of 400 travellers were asked to fill in the questionnaire.