Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis and Bollywood icon Amitabh Bachchan yesterday picked up brooms to clean the sprawling Sir J J Hospital complex as part of the NDTV-Dettol ‘MahaCleanathon’ campaign.
“We have not come here to make speeches… We want to set an example and hope this movement continues and we can keep our cities clean,” Fadnavis said as he dug his hands into dirt at the event.
Bachchan, the campaign’s brand ambassador, swished around with a broom along with Fadnavis, and then picked up the accumulated garbage with his bare hands to dump it in a cane basket.
“If each one cleans up 10 yards around their homes, the entire city will sparkle. When you see somebody littering, tell them if you keep doing this, it will have an impact,” Bachchan said.
Later, he tweeted: “At MahaCleanathon to acknowledge the Swachch Bharat campaign in Maharashtra and to work so many others follow.”
The campaign, launched in January 2016, aims to complete 5mn manhours to the Swachch Bharat Abhiyan and has already clocked in over 3.3mn manhours, with the rest scheduled to be completed by the year-end, an official said.
Fadnavis said that by October 2 this year – marking Mahatma Gandhi’s 147th birth anniversary – 50 cities in Maharashtra will be ‘swachch’ or clean, and around 7,000 villages have already become open defecation-free.
Several other celebrities like Priyanka Chopra, Dia Mirza, Sonakshi Sinha, Arjun Kapoor, ministers, government officials and commoners joined the initiative yesterday.