Bihar still lags behind in the race to make its districts free of open defecation.

Bihar, the third most populous state of the country after Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, does not have a single open defecation free district though 192 districts of the country have already been declared free of the practice. And the state is not going to make an entry into this list when the Centre next releases a fresh list of open defecation free districts of the country.

The Centre has set October 2 as the deadline for identifying new districts made open defecation free, on the basis of which the fresh list will be prepared. Bihar was hopeful of making entry into this list this year but its hope has fallen flat. Rohtas district, where over 95 per cent households have toilets, was likely to achieve the status. But it has not happened.

'Some households in Rohtasgarh in rural Rohtas and Dehri in urban Rohtas have yet not been equipped with toilets and hence we would not be able to claim for the district to be declared ODF (open defecation free) by the October 2 deadline,' a senior official of the rural development department told The Telegraph on Sunday.

The department has been given the responsibility of toilet construction in the state.

The pace of toilet construction has not been up to the mark in Bihar. Around 8,000 toilets are being constructed in the state per day on average whereas the state needs to construct around 25,000 toilets per day if India is to be made open defecation free by the end of 2019.

According to a survey conducted by the state government in 2011-12, there were around 1.60 crore households at that time in Bihar which didn't have a toilet. Since then, 21.65 lakh toilets have been constructed. Against the target of constructing 96.95 lakh toilets in the current fiscal (2017-18), around seven lakh toilets have been constructed in the first six months (April to September) of the current financial year.

Confronted with a question on the pace of toilet construction, a senior official of the rural development department said: 'The rate had gone down well below 8,000 toilets per day during floods this year. Now we are on the recovery path and very soon we would start construction of toilets in 5,000 panchayats simultaneously and if five toilets too would be constructed in each panchayat on daily basis we would be able to construct 25,000 toilets per day, which would help in meeting the 2019 deadline.'

The official pointed out that the 1.60 crore figure was of 2011-12 and many households must have constructed toilets on their own since then which has not been updated in the government data base. Once this figure would be updated the actual target of toilet construction is bound to come down, the official said.

Rural development minister Shravan Kumar appeared more philosophic in his reply when it was pointed out to him that not a single district of Bihar figures in the list of open defecation free districts in the country.

'One needs to see this drive from a different angle,' the minister said. 'Toilet construction is not the only issue; rather it is concerned with behavioural change so that those opting for construction of toilets also need to use them. That is why it is taking some time. We are hopeful that things would improve drastically in the time to come.'

He also pointed out that some more districts like Sheikhpura, Sitamarhi, Sheohar and Munger have made good progress on the sanitation front and these districts were likely to become open defecation free very soon.

'By next year we would have several districts in the list,' the minister claimed.