The five south Indian states have some of the cleanest railway stations in the country, including among some of the busiest ones across India.
An Indian Railways survey released on Tuesday ranked a sample of 407 stations from across India on 40 cleanliness parameters based on feedback from 1,30,000 passengers.
The condition of the platform floors, cleanliness of platform areas and 'promptness in cleaning of extremes of dirtiness like nightsoil/vomit' were among the criteria taken into account.
The survey classified the 407 railways stations into four categories, and released rankings for each category along with an overall ranking.
While Surat in Gujarat is the cleanest station among the busiest stations (with over 50,000 footfalls every day) in the country, Karnataka’s Bengaluru holds two spots in the top 10 in that category.
The Yesvantpur station is in third place followed by Bangalore City in fourth position.
Secunderabad in Telangana comes fifth while Kozikhode in Kerala comes seventh and Chennai ninth.
Even among the top 10 stations which handle between 25,000-50,000 passengers and 10,000-25,000, four are from south India.
For stations surveyed with a footfall of 25, 000-50, 000 people — Nellore in Andhra Pradesh, Mysore in Karnataka occupies the fifth and sixth place while the eighth and tenth place is occupied by Madurai, Tamil Nadu and Ernakulam, Kerala respectively.
Salem, Erode and Tiruchchirapalli in TN occupies the third, fifth and sixth places amongst the top 10 cleanest stations with a footfall between 10, 000-25, 000 people while Bangarpet in Karnataka occupies the seventh position.
Even among the least busy stations in the survey, three among the top 10 stations are from south India- Kumbakonam (fifth), Kovilpatti (seventh) and Virudhunagar (ninth) in TN.
In the overall cleanliness category, Beas in Punjab was ranked the cleanest in the whole country, followed by Gandhidham, Vasco Da Gama in Goa Jamnagar, Kumbakonam, Surat, Nasik Road, Rajkot, Salem and Ankleshwar.
The Indian Railways operates 7,137 stations across the country which saw a total traffic of about 8,224 million passengers in 2014-15.
(With PTI Inputs)