Many states including UP, Maharashtra and West Bengal get a four-fold hike in central assistance to speed up JJM works

NEW DELHI: Pushing states to achieve their goal of providing tap water connections to all rural households before the national target of 2024, the Centre has started allocating higher financial assistance which turned out to be a four-fold hike this financial year compared to last fiscal under the flagship ‘Jal Jeevan Mission’ (JJM) scheme.
The states which have already been allocated four times higher central assistance include Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Chhattisgarh, Kerala, West Bengal, Tamil Nadu, Andhra Pradesh and Assam among others.
Under the JJM, launched in August 2019, the Centre has planned to provide tap water connections to all 19.20 crore rural households in the country by 2024.
Though four states/UTs - Goa, Telangana, Andaman & Nicobar Islands and Puducherry - have already achieved 100% household connection in their respective rural areas, five north-western states/UTs – Punjab, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu & Kashmir and Ladakh – have decided to expedite their efforts and achieve the targets by 2022, two years before the national target.
During the current ongoing process to assess the progress made by different states/UTs since the launch of the scheme in 2019, the ‘Jal Shakti’ (water resources) ministry has approved allocation of over Rs 8,216 crore in 2021-22 for five north-western States/UTs. This amount is more than four times of the allocation to these states/UTs in 2020-21.
Analysis of data, released so far by the ministry, shows that Uttar Pradesh has been allocated the highest amount of Rs 10,870 crore followed by Maharashtra (Rs 7,064 crore), West Bengal (nearly Rs 7,000 crore), Tamil Nadu (Rs 3,691 crore) and Andhra Pradesh (Rs 3,182 crore).
At the time of launch of the JJM in 2019, only 3.23 crore (17%) rural households in the country had tap water supply. During the last 22 months, additional 4.32 crore households have been provided with piped connections, bringing the overall coverage to 7.56 crore (over 39%) rural households across the country. At present, every household has tap water supply in 62 districts and more than 93 thousand villages in India.
Besides JJM, the ministry has another flagship programme - “Jal Shakti Abhiyan: Catch the Rain” – which is focused on rainwater conservation. The campaign for 2021 was launched by the Prime Minister Narendra Modi on World Water Day March 22.
Seeking to bring all Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha MPs on board to make this campaign a success, Rattan Lal Kataria, minister of state for Jal Shakti, had early this week written to all MPs seeking their active participation and appealed to them to become the 'brand ambassadors' for this campaign in their respective areas.