Railway stations at Surat (Gujarat) and Beas (Punjab) have been adjudged the cleanest stations in a survey conducted by the Indian Railways across 407 stations.

• The preliminary report of the survey which was released by rail minister Suresh Prabhu on Thursday was based on feedback of around 1.34 lakh passengers.
• The survey was conducted through interviews by survey teams across each of the 407 stations that fall under 16 zones.
• Every passenger was asked to rate the cleanliness of stations objectively on 40 different cleanliness parameters.
• Of the 407, 75 were so-called A1 stations (based on their traffic) and the rest A.
• The survey results for A1 category are: Surat (1); Rajkot (2), Bilaspur Junction (3), Solapur (4), Mumbai Central (5), Chandigarh (6), Bhubaneswar (7), Vadodara (8), Madurai (9) and New Jalpaiguri (10).
• For A category railway stations, the rankings are: Beas (1), Gandhidham in Ahmedabad (2), Vasco-da-Gama (3), Jamnagar (4), Kumbakonam (5), Nasik Road (6), Salem Jn (7), Ankleshwar (8), Kathgodam (9), Kovilpatti (10). 
• Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s constituency Varanasi’s railway station ranked poorly in terms of cleanliness as it stood at 65, among the 75 A-1 railway stations (those earning revenue more than Rs. 50 crore) surveyed.

According to railway officials, the final report is expected to be submitted by the Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) shortly, after scrutiny of which, the ministry of railways will take further steps to improve the cleanliness standards at major railway stations.