People living in the villages along the Ganga in Bihar now don't litter the river by attending to nature's call in the open.

All the 472 villages have now become open defecation-free. Spread across 307 panchayats of a dozen districts - Buxar, Bhojpur, Patna, Saran, Vaishali, Samastipur, Begusarai, Khagaria, Lakhisarai, Munger, Bhagalpur and Katihar - these villages became open defecation free under the National Mission for Clean Ganga also known as the Namami Gange project.

The mission entails the twin objectives of checking pollution on the Ganga and its conservation and rejuvenation.

The achievement assumes significance in a state like Bihar where not a single district has become open defecation-free till now even though around 200 districts in the country carry this distinction. According to a survey conducted by the state government in 2011-12, there were around 1.60 crore households at that time here which didn't have a toilet. Since then, 21.65 lakh toilets have been constructed so far.

"We had set the target of December 2016 for achieving this distinction but owing to floods and some other problems the achievement was finally made in April this year but we declared these villages open defecation-free only after a state-level team cross-checked the claims made by the district administration concerned and a final certification by a central team which toured these places and expressed satisfaction about the claim," a senior official of the state rural development department told The Telegraph.

The rural development department has been given the responsibility of implementing the sanitation scheme in the state.

The official conceded that the task had become quite challenging towards the final leg as some of the villagers in a few villages of Samastipur, Patna, Saran and Bhagalpur were not responding to the special campaign having been launched there to make people aware of the importance of toilets and also the adverse impact of open defecation on human health and also the river which they worship.

"Special camps were organised in the identified area and senior administrative officials, including the district magistrates concerned, had to camp at such places for breaking the final barrier," he added.

The department, however, has not withdrawn from these areas after achieving the target of open defecation and local vigilance committees have been set up to keep vigil on the residents and the success of the sanitation drive depends on the change in habits of the villagers who had been used to defecating in the open.

Apart from representatives of the panchayati raj institutions, active residents, particularly women, have been kept in these teams and they would keep the vigil at least for the next six months.

Followed by this achievement, the rural development department has now decided to move for ODF plus which entails construction of community toilets at few places in rural areas and also to start projects related to solid waste management with the ultimate goal of not throwing any dirt in the Ganga river.

"While the community toilets would take care of special events or social functions in villages, the project related to solid waste would ensure proper dumping and treatment of garbage," said the official and added that this work would be carried out along with the state-wide drive of making the state open defecation-free by 2019.