Bhubaneswar: The rural sanitation campaign under the Swachh Bharat Mission has gathered momentum in the state with a quantum jump in individual household latrine (IHHL) coverage growing by 44 per cent over the past three years.

This was revealed from a review meeting by chief secretary Aditya Prasad Padhi and Union drinking water and sanitation secretary Parameswaran Iyer at the secretariat on Wednesday.

The review revealed that the IHHL coverage in the state's rural areas by end of January reached 56 per cent against the background of 12 per cent coverage, according to the baseline survey conducted in October 2014.

Padhi directed all the district collectors to scale up their coverage to at least 65 per cent by March. Panchayati raj and drinking water secretary D.K. Singh advised the collectors to utilise the same manpower deployed for implementation of the rural housing scheme.

It was also known from the review that around 7,715 villages in 30 districts of the state had been declared open defecation free (ODF). Iyer advised the officials to complete the ODF status verification of these villages within 90 days and upload the results on the website.

Chief secretary Padhi directed the officials to focus on behavioural change of the people and sustainability of the campaign. Singh asked the collectors to engage at least four swachhagrahis in each gram panchayat for carrying forward the campaign and sustainability in the ODF status.

A target had been set to cover around 82.34 lakh households under the IHHL scheme. Out of it, more than 46.18 lakh households have been covered by end of January. So far, Deogarh district has been declared an open defecation free district in the state. A target was set to make five more districts - Jharsuguda, Balasore, Gajpati, Sambalpur and Sonepur - open defecation free by end of June this year.