Dehradun: Dehradun may not have featured anywhere in the list of cleanest cities in the Swachh Survekshan Report 2018 but the cleanliness in the city, or at least the route leading to FRI, just before PM Modi’s Yoga Day even may as well be enough for the city to be declared the cleanest in the country.Residents say that it is ironic how it takes just one VIP event in the city to work overtime and ensure that the venue looks immaculate. “For the most part we are complaining about choked drains and strewn garbage but it takes DMC days to act on it but whenever there is a VIP event the entire route and venue are cleaned in a day or two,” said Rashmi Singh, a resident of the city.“It is astonishing how the city which was ranked 316th out of 434 has been cleaned so much in just over a week. Had the officials been this serious about cleanliness from the very beginning, we would definitely have fared well,” said Rakesh Arya, another resident of the city.While many parts of the city are strewn with garbage and pre-monsoon rains have resulted in overflowing drains, the routes for Prime Minister’s visit to Forest Research Institute has been perfectly cleared of all the potholes. “Last night I was travelling from Garhi Cant to Kaulagarh and I have never seen the road so clean and free of potholes. I felt as if I was driving on a foreign highway,” said another resident.Now the authorities have specially brought in vacuum cleaners, which DMC is now planning to buy, to ensure that not even a speck of dust is visible on the roads leading to the event venue. “We have seen similar sanitization drive in the city when President Pranab Mukherjee had come and later when Amit Shah visited. This shows that if the authorities want, they can ensure cleanliness. Why is it not done then on daily basis,” asked another resident.

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