The Union Jal Shakti Ministry plans to cover a population of 39 lakh in 1,262 villages of 33 districts under the Jal Jeevan Mission for the year 2021-22 taking the total rural households that will get tap water connections to about 4 lakh.

The State Level Scheme Sanctioning Committee (SLSSC) of Uttar Pradesh has approved proposals submitted by the state worth Rs 1,882 crore for making provision of tap water connections, where 735 schemes were approved by the committee. As per the approval, tap water connections to be provided to 4.03 lakh rural households of the state.

As on date, 34 lakh (12.9 per cent) rural households out of 2.64 crore are getting tap water supply in their homes. In 2021-22, the state plans to provide tap water connections to 78 lakh households, a release from the Jal Shakti Ministry said.

Under Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), there is provision for constitution of State Level Scheme Sanctioning Committee (SLSSC) for consideration and approval of schemes to be taken up for making provision of tap water supply to rural households. The SLSSC acts as a state-level Committee to consider water supply schemes/projects, and a nominee of the National Jal Jeevan Mission (NJJM), Government of India is a member of the committee.

The national JJM was launched to provide clean tap water to every household and freeing women and girls from the drudgery of fetching water from a distance. It has already released Rs 2,400 crore grant-in-aid to Uttar Pradesh during 2021-22.

To accelerate the pace of JJM implementation, National Jal Jeevan Mission has urged the state to take necessary measures to provide tap water supply to 78 lakh rural households in the state this year, for which the state plans to start water supply works in more than 60,000 villages by December 2021.

“The Government of India is ensuring that there is no paucity of funds for the implementation of this transformational mission in the state of Uttar Pradesh,” the Ministry release said.

In February 2019, the Prime Minister laid the foundation stone for piped water supply schemes for the rural areas of seven districts viz. Jhansi, Mahoba, Lalitpur, Jalaun, Hamirpur, Banda and Chitrakoot in the Bundelkhand region; and in November 2020, for rural drinking water supply projects for Mirzapur and Sonbhadra districts of Vindhyachal region. These are water-stressed areas. These projects will benefit about 18.88 lakh households in 6,742 villages of the region. “So far, the physical progress is about 50 per cent in these schemes,” the release said.

With a focus on aservice delivery’, 10 villages in Baghpat district are being taken for online measurement & monitoring system’ as part of Grand Technology Challenge being run by Jal Jeevan Mission in partnership with Union Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and (MeiTY) and state government. The aonline system’ will generate alerts whenever the water supply in the village is disrupted so that timely corrective action can be taken.