IIT Mandi students undertake clean-up campaign in Mandi Town

Dharamshala: The students of Indian Institute of Technology IIT Mandi in Himachal, its Faculty and Staff undertook a massive clean-up drive at different locations in Mandi town on Saturday (25th August 2018). More than 300 volunteers participated in this noble initiative, including nearly 190 First Year B.Tech students for whom this activity was also a part of their Five-Week Induction Program (5 WIP).

The major objective was to instill in students the vision of a ‘Swachh Bharat’ (Clean India). Since this activity was majorly driven by the First Year Students as a part of their induction program, the cleaning event was an attempt to further illustrate the idea of plastic pollution and waste segregation to the students. Also, this event aims to create mass awareness about restricted use of plastics and keeping the surroundings clean.

Volunteers were deployed to five different locations across Mandi, namely the locality near Panchawaktar Mahadev temple, Indira Market, near Hospital road, Bhiuli to Victoria Bridge and near Barsele (Tehsil region).

Speaking about the importance of this clean-up drive, Dr. Sumit Sinha Ray, Assistant Professor, School of Engineering, IIT Mandi, said, “This initiative is in accord with the Clean India Mission. We believe that students have learnt the importance of keeping the society clean and have realized the hardships of all those people who toil hard to keep our neighborhood garbage free. We hope to conduct more of such initiatives in the future as well.”

Prof. Timothy A. Gonsalves, Director, IIT Mandi, and Mr. Rugved Milind Thakur IAS, Deputy Commissioner, Mandi, inaugurated the clean-up drive in the presence of Mr. Punit Raghu (ASP Mandi), Ms. Madhu Bala (Regional Director of NSS) and Mr. J.R. Sharma (Registrar of IIT Mandi).