Under the Swachh Bharat Mission (Grameen), over 5.4 lakh villages and 585 districts have been declared Open Defecation Free (ODF). 27 States and Union Territories have declared themselves ODF so far. Over 9 crore toilets have been built across rural India so far, taking the national rural sanitation coverage up from 39% in 2014 to over 98% today. This progress has been independently verified by a large scale third-party National Annual Rural Sanitation Survey 2017-18 under the World Bank-supported project across 90,000 households in over 6000 villages, which found the rural toilet usage to be 93.4%. Two more independent surveys conducted in the past by the Quality Council of India in 2017, and National Sample Survey Organization in 2016, also found the usage of these toilets to be 91% and 95% respectively. The Mission is on track to achieve an ODF India by October 2019… (PIB, Ministry of Drinking Water & Sanitation, Jan. 9, 2019)