Barring eight States run by the BJP and a non-Congress party, the construction process of toilets across the country under the Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s pet project Swachchh Bharat Mission launched in October last year is moving at a snail’s pace. Out of a total of 27.24 lakh toilets constructed across the country in nearly five months since October 2 last year, the share of the eight States — Karnataka, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, West Bengal, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra — is around 80 per cent.

In this scenario, said a senior official from the Water and Sanitation Ministry, the task of tripling the construction rate of toilets from 3 per cent at present to 10 per cent to achieve its goal of making the country open-defecation free by 2019, seems a little difficult. According to the latest data available from the Union Water and Sanitation Ministry, Karnataka tops the list with 5.16 lakh toilets followed by Uttar Pradesh (4.03 lakh) and West Bengal (3.48 lakh) are among the eight States which have crossed the 1 lakh mark as far as construction of toilets is concerned.

The other States include Rajasthan with 3.35 lakh toilets, followed by Maharashtra (1.68 lakh), Madhya Pradesh (1.47 lakh), Andhra Pradesh (1.43 lakh) and Gujarat with 1.32 lakh toilets. As per the Government data tabled in the Parliament recently, while the North-Eastern States like Sikkim, Nagaland and Mizoram are yet start off with construction of the loos under the Mission under the 1 lakh mark, Assam has so far managed to construct 64,459 toilets followed by Manipur (13,330 toilets), Meghalaya (11,747 toilets) and Tripura reporting construction of 19,657 loos till February 23 this year since October 2, 2014.

Among the States which have shown dismal performance include Jammu & Kashmir (6,033), Telengana (39,406), Uttarakhand (17,838) and Jharkhand (38,310). Under the Mission, 8.84 crore households have to be covered with individual toilets in the next five years till 2019.