We will ensure a 'Swachh Bharat' by Gandhiji's 150th birth anniversary in 2019… Create an open defecation free India by awareness campaign and enabling people to build toilets in their home as well as in schools and public places. Set up modern, scientific sewage and waste management systems. We will introduce Sanitation Ratings measuring and ranking our cities and towns on 'sanitation'.

The 2014 manifesto's sanitation promise is one of the few in that document with a hard deadline attached to a symbol: "We will ensure a 'Swachh Bharat' by Gandhiji's 150th birth anniversary in 2019." Under it sit four specific commitments — an open defecation free India built by awareness and household toilets, modern sewage and waste management, sanitation ratings for cities and towns, and potable drinking water for all.

On the headline, the deadline was met on its own terms. The Swachh Bharat Mission was launched on 2 October 2014 and rural India was declared open defecation free on 2 October 2019, the exact anniversary named. Over ten crore household toilets were reported built in that period. Whatever is disputed about the declaration, the construction programme was real and unprecedented in scale.

The sanitation ratings promise was also delivered, and delivered well: Swachh Survekshan has ranked cities annually since 2016 and Swachh Survekshan Grameen covers villages, with third-party verification. It is one of the more durable measurement systems any Indian scheme has produced.

The part that has not been settled is whether it worked in the sense the promise implies. A toilet built is not a toilet used, and open defecation free is a declared status, verified through the mission's own processes, not an independently measured one. The government created a second phase precisely because sustaining the status was in question — Phase II runs 2020-21 to 2026-27 with ODF sustainability as its first objective. The Ministry of Jal Shakti's figures as on 10 February 2026: of 5,86,944 villages, 4,96,180 are ODF Plus (Model), 5,29,231 have solid waste management arrangements and 5,46,487 liquid waste management arrangements — all as reported by states on the mission's information system.

And on the outcome the whole enterprise was justified by, the ministry's answer is a single word. Asked "whether any impact assessment of sanitation interventions under Phase-II on public health indicators such as reduction in waterborne diseases and clean environment has been done by the Government", it replied: "No." The follow-up questions were dismissed as not arising.

Twelve years after launch, the government can say how many toilets were built and how many villages declared themselves clean. It cannot say whether children are less likely to get diarrhoea. That is a choice about what to measure, and it is the reason this fact-check does not simply mark the promise delivered.

The fourth commitment in the same passage — potable drinking water for all — is graded separately in this corpus under the Jal Jeevan Mission entries.

Our verdict is lacks context.