Prime Minister Narendra Modi was on Wednesday conferred the "Global Goalkeeper" award by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation for the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan launched by his government. In a series of tweets in Hindi, the Prime Minister's Office (PMO) said Modi lauded the countrymen for contributing to the grand success of the cleanliness mission, saying he shared the honour with them.

"Getting the award in the year of Mahatma Gandhi's 150th birth anniversary is personally significant for me. When 130 crore people take a pledge, any challenge can be overcome," the prime minister said. He dedicated the award to those Indians who transformed the Swachh Bharat campaign into a "people's movement" and accorded topmost priority to cleanliness in their day-to-day lives. "No such campaign was seen or heard about in any other country in the recent past. It might have been launched by our government, but people took control of it," Modi said.