WB: Mega hand-washing event held in North 24 Parganas with record participation

According to the organizers, the mass hand-washing initiative was organized at around 15000 venues across the district and over 25 lakh people, including children and women, participated in the event.

North 24 Parganas District Magistrate (DM) Manmeet Nanda, SP Tanmoy Roy Chowdhury, WASH chief of UNICEF India Suzanne Coates, West Bengal Panchayat and Rural Development minister Subrata Mukherjee, Food and Supplies minister Jyotipriyo Mallick, Minister of State for Health Chandrima Bhattacharya, Tollywood actors Soham Chakraborty and Nusrat Jahan were present at the event which was hosted centrally at Barasat Kachari Maidan.

District's DM Manmeet Nanda told IBNS: "This event, would take us miles ahead and closer towards making North 24 Parganas an Open Defecation Free (ODF) zone. The district is already working in a mission mode to saturate all households with toilets by March next year."

Speaking on the occasion, minister Subrata Mukherjee said, "Nirmal Bangla is one of the dreams of chief minister Mamata Banerjee and today's event becomes a social movement. This is not an event of any political party or a district's administration, this is an event of people."

"We have built over 10 lakh toilets so far across the state, which is also a record," he further added.

Talking on the initiative, UNICEF India representative Suzanne Coates told IBNS, "While one hand, I see such strong leadership and political commitment of the state and on the other hand there are millions of people from all walks of life coming together to take part in hand-washing here."

However, the organizers claimed that the event has broken all previous records and they also believe that it will be recorded in the Guinness Book of World Records and Limca Book of Records.

(Reporting by Deepayan Sinha)