Belthangady: The cleanliness drive mooted by Dharmasthala Dharmadhikari Dr Veerendra Heggade, the hereditary administrator of the Dharmasthala temple, to clean religious centres in the state had received tremendous response, a top temple official said.

Dharmasthala rural development programme executive director H L Manjunath said Dr Heggade’s call had encouraged more than 7,19,000 volunteers who participated in the drive across the state during the last one month.

Dr Heggade had said last month that all the religious centres of the state should take up cleanliness drive to don a new face within a month.

During the campaign, 8,045 religious centres were cleaned which included over 200 mutts, 65 basadis (Jain shrines), 12 masjids and four churches.

He said that Chikkaballapur came first in the drive as over 40,000 devotees completed cleaning 580 temples.

Dakshina Kannada had completed 560 religious centres and Kodagu completed 486 religious centres.

The campaign would be held in Udupi Sri Krishna temple premises on January 21.

Some of the famous pilgrim centres that were completed during the campaign include Ullal Dargah, Mysuru Chamundeshwari Temple, Kukke Sri Subrahmanya Temple and Hubballi Siddaruda Math, the release said.