The high court’s six-day deadline to the civic body to clear trash and flush out water from inundated areas in the city has done wonders.

Spick and span streets are greeting citizens every morning. Garbage dumped at road corners has vanished in several areas.

True, the dirty picture of some colonies and internal arteries are yet to change. But the overall scenario of the state capital reflects the seriousness of the civic body to follow the high court order. It has channelised all its energy and resources to implement it.

On September 21, a high court division bench ordered Patna Municipal Corporation commissioner and other civic officials to cart away garbage and flush out water from the flooded areas in the capital. The court made it clear that the failure to comply with the order would attract strict disciplinary action against the civic officials. The court, which posted the matter for hearing on September 27, issued the directive while hearing a PIL.

Four days on, the citizens were going ga ga on Tuesday over the impact of the directive.

“I have been seeing a number of civic body officials moving around the city supervising sanitation works. It has helped clean up the capital. A lot, however, is yet to be done. While the main roads are getting due attention, many colonies and internal roads are still neglected,” said M.D. Shahid, a resident of Buddha Colony.

Abhay Pathak of Boring Canal Road said his area was looking “different” over the past few days. “Garbage heaps could earlier be seen along the stretch. But most of them have been cleared now. Neighbouring colonies like Anandpuri, Sri Krishna Nagar, Raja Pul and Buddha Colony among others, however, are still not as clean,” he said.

Civic officials said they had pressed into service all its resources and manpower available. “We are using all our 3,257 sanitation workers, 108 tractors, 20 tippers and four compactors. All senior officers are on the ground to ensure that sanitation workers and inspectors work swiftly and act on public complaints,” said Shailesh Chandra Diwakar, officer on special duty, PMC.

He said the sanitation inspectors of ward numbers 1, 10, 20, 36 and 46 were dismissed from service after they were found slack in their duties. “These inspectors were not paying heed to repeated public complaints,” said Diwakar.

In a hastily convened meeting on Monday, the corporation’s empowered standing committee granted “in-principle” approval to Bihar Urban Infrastructure Development Corporation’s proposal to float a subsidiary company for providing waste collection and disposal services in the corporation area on no-profit-no-loss basis.