Three years after Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared the countrywide goal of providing potable tap water connections to every household, his home state Gujarat has announced the culmination of the target across all its districts.
The western state has now said that it has successfully connected as many as 91.7 lakh households in 33 districts with secured tap water connections. When the flagship scheme Har Ghar Jal was announced in August 2019, only 65 lakh (71%) households had secured tap water connections.
CERTIFICATION AWAITED
However, the state is yet to get certified. “A state is certified by the central ministry only after all the villages pass a resolution through the Gram Panchayat confirming access to drinking water to all the households. This may take some time,” an official from the Jal Shakti ministry told News18.
As of Wednesday, only four districts – Anand, Dang, Gandhinagar, and Morbi – out of the total 33 districts have been certified in the state, covering as many as 6,717 villages out of 18,187. The next in line is Porbandar, Mahesana, Botad, Vadodara, Dwarka, and Surat.
TARGET 2024
Gujarat is now the third big state, after Haryana and Telangana that has now declared completion of the mission. Under the scheme, the government plans to provide potable tap water to all the villages in the country by 2024. So far, Goa is the only state which has successfully achieved the target and got certified as well. Meanwhile, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Puducherry, Dadra and Nagar Haveli and Daman and Diu are three union territories that have also completed their mission.
While the government had announced the Jal Jeevan Mission-Har Ghar Jal in August 2019, the necessary guidelines to steer the programme were not released until December. Just when the states were gearing up to conduct surveys across villages, the Covid pandemic hit the world, stalling all the ongoing work.
As of October 26, 10.41 crore rural households (54%) have been provided tap water connections under the scheme. Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, and Bihar are also on the verge of completing their targets followed by Manipur, Maharashtra, Sikkim, Mizoram, Ladakh, and Uttarakhand. However, progress is still slow in Uttar Pradesh and Jharkhand.
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