Mangaluru:  The Minister of State for Drinking Water and Sanitation, Ramesh Jigajinagi, has said 70.62 per cent of people in the country have individual toilets now.

Launching the fourth phase of the ‘Swacchata Abhiyan’, which is being organised by the Ramakrishna Mission in Mangaluru on Friday, he said the Swachch Bharat campaign was launched on October 2, 2014. The government wants to make India an ODF (open defecation-free) country by October 2, 2019.

He said 5.21 crore individual toilets have been built in the country after that.

Jigajinagi said 2.67 lakh villages, 1.17 lakh village panchayats, 225 districts, and 2,048 taluks have been declared as ODF areas. As of now, 70.62 per cent of the people in the country have individual toilets.

Giving details about Karnataka, he said 79.5 per cent of the people have individual toilets in the state.

Districts such as Udupi, Bengaluru Rural, Kodagu, Dakshina Kannada, Chikmagaluru, Hasan, Kolar, Mandya, Shivamogga, and Ramnagar have been declared as ODF districts.

States such as Himachal Pradesh, Kerala, Sikkim, Uttarakhand, Gujarat and Haryana and the Union Territory of Chandigarh have been declared as ODF areas, he said.