Union Minister of State for Tourism KJ Alphons has called Varanasi a “dirty city” which “needs to be cleaned” during his two-day visit. Interestingly, it happens to be the Lok Sabha constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The minister’s statement has caused huge embarrassment to Modi, who has been talking tall about the city’s development work. Alphons also expressed his concern over filth piling up in the river Ganga. This again contradicts the government’s claims of successfully implementing ‘Clean Ganga Mission’ one of the dream projects of the prime minister.
The Kerala MP, who was in the city on Tuesday asserted that the traffic situation in Varanasi is extremely bad too.
“The roads here are extremely congested which results in a traffic jam. The city is also filthy and a lot of cleanliness work is required. For cleaning Ganga three sewage plants have been installed,” India Today quoted Alphons, who is currently serving as the Union Minister of State for Tourism, as saying.
Talking about less footfall at Sarnath every year, Alphons said in the next two years, the focus should be to double the tourists’ size to 10 lakhs. At present, only 5 lakh tourists visit Sarnath every year. A Financial Express report mentions the minister saying that Varanasi has the potential to attract tourists but the unclean surroundings have resulted in a drop in the number of tourists visiting here.
The Samajwadi Party has taken a dig at the BJP over its own minister’s negative assessment of the city. Party spokesperson Juhie Singh said that neither the Centre nor the Yogi Adityanath government has done any development work here. She said, “Now the BJP minister has started criticising the ground situation in Varanasi. It is imminent now that neither Centre nor the state government has done any development work and PM also knows about it.”
According to ANI, locals noted that Municipal Corporation isn’t carrying out its responsibilities properly. The pictures posted by the news agency show the dirty streets and ghats in Varanasi.
Tweets by locals also suggest the holy city is dirty and needs a cleanliness drive, maybe something on the lines of Modi’s ambitious Swach Bharat for his own constituency?
https://twitter.com/rananth/status/1004276249202585600
Thanks brother…Beauty of SM: cleaned by now……..keep posting such pics…. onus on us….. 🇮🇳🇮🇳🇮🇳🙏🙏🙏
— RAKA (@Rajeev88657432) June 6, 2018
Kashi & River Ganga are sacred for Hundus & they should take care about the cleanliness & devinity of Ghats.Corporation can construct enclosures with steel mesh in bank of river,so that Rice,Flowers etc needed to put in to river for rituals will settle inside the cage,wont spread
— prasad_perla(Modi Ka Parivar) (@prasad_perla) June 6, 2018
https://twitter.com/SaxenaSidhartha/status/1004284851590221824
Benaras is overloaded with garbage, it will not resell to Abe any more who has full report
— vijay banga (@lekh27) June 6, 2018