Bettiah: The drinking and sanitation department has roped in four popular film stars, including Amitabh Bachchan, to ensure grand success of Prime Minister Narendra Modi's visit to Motihari on April 10 for what the Centre is describing as Satyagrah se Swakchhagrah Andolan.
Prime Minister Modi is scheduled to address 20,000 swachhagrahis as part of Champaran Satyagrah's centenary celebrations, launched by the Bihar government last April.
In a two-minute video that has gone viral on social media, Amitabh Bachchan and other actors, namely Akshay Kumar, Madhuri Dixit and Anushka Sharma, have appealed to the masses to make India clean and open defecation-free (ODF) by 2019. " Aaj se 100 saal pahale, rastrapita Mahatma Gandhi ne ek satyagrah kiya tha. April 10, 2018 se Champaran ke usi pawan dharti se ek baar hum phir gandgi aur khule me shauch jaise gandgi se Bharat ko aazadi dilane ka sankalp lein. Chalo Champaran chalein (100 years ago, Father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi had launched a movement from the soil of Champaran. Let's take a pledge to eradicate unhygienic practices and open defecation from the same pious soil of Champaran on April 10," goes the message by Amitabh Bachchan.
As things stand now, billboards, posters and banners depicting Mahatma Gandhi with the "Satyagrah se Swakchhagrah Andolan" slogan are coming up across East Champaran district headquarter Motihari, around 183km north of Patna.
In the meantime, chief secretary Anjani Kumar Singh, DGP K.S. Dwivedi and home secretary Amir Subhani visited Tent City and Gandhi Maidan and took stock of security and other arrangements ahead of Prime Minister Modi's visit. When contacted, Motihari district magistrate Raman Kumar said the officials expressed their satisfaction over the progress till date. "Construction of Tent City to lodge the Swakchhagrahis is in an advance stage," he said.
Prime Minister Modi is also likely to dedicate the locomotive facility in Madhepura to the nation and flag off the first high-power electric locomotive assembled there on April 10, sources told PTI.
