Swachh Bharat Mission: Sri Meenakshi Sundareswarar Temple gets first position among 10 iconic places

Under the Swachhta Hi Seva programme, the Sri Meenakshi Sundareswarar Temple in Madurai attained the top slot from among 10 iconic places selected under the Swachh Bharat Mission in the country.

The list also contains the Taj Mahal, Ajmer Sharif Dargah, the Golden Temple, Tirupathi temple and Sri Vaishno Devi temple. The Ministry of drinking water and sanitation, the convening ministry for Swachh Bharath Mission will give the award to Madurai district collector K Veera Raghava Rao and corporation commissioner Aneesh Sekhar in New Delhi on Monday.

The function will be held to mark Gandhi Jayanthi and the culmination of the Swachhta Hi Seva.

In an order to keep the Madurai Temple clean and plastic-free, the collaborative efforts have been taken over the few years.

Around 60 contract employees worked all through the day to keep the premises clean while about 300 volunteers joined the drive every month. Not only this, Industrial Houses such as TVS and Thiagarajar Mills also helped them by providing extra staff for cleanliness drive.

Temple is well equipped with the cleaning tools such as mopping machine, water air gun and hydraulic ladder, according to the Joint Commissioner of the temple N Natarajan.

In a bid to stop littering in the temple, there was an order to slap a fine of Rs 50. "we have never had the need to do so because the clean environment deters people from littering it,'' he said.

Although there was an order to charge a fine of Rs 50 on those littering the temple, we never had a need to so because the clean environment of the temple deters people from littering, he added.