DHAKA: India prime minister Narendra Modi has ordered government officers to work on father of nation Mahatma Gandhi’s birthday, a national holiday, to clean ministries, including toilets, in a nationwide cleanliness drive.

Modi plans to honour the independence hero by launching on Thursday the Clean India campaign, which aims to solve the country’s sanitation and rubbish problems within five years to mark the 150th anniversary of Gandhi’s October 2 birthday.

Several officials in government departments told Reuters they had been called into work on Thursday to help clean up.

‘We are all buying brooms, we are going to clean up the bathrooms here,’ one defence ministry official said.

‘This is our work now.’

The order to sweep and clean latrines echoes Gandhi’s own insistence that his disciples carry out tasks that in India are traditionally associated with people from lower castes.

During India’s campaign for freedom from colonial British rule, Gandhi spoke about the need to improve cleanliness, saying ‘sanitation was more important than independence’.

Since taking office, Modi has repeatedly invoked Gandhi and lamented the poor state of sanitation and public cleanliness in India.

He has also vowed to clean the heavily polluted Ganges river in time for Gandhi’s 150th anniversary, reports The Straits Times.

BDST: 2052 HRS, SEP 29, 2014