BHUBANESWAR: More than 44 per cent (pc) rural households in Odisha have been provided tap water connections in the last two and a half years and the number of connections has gone up by almost 10 times. In a written reply in Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for Jal Shakti Prahlad Singh Patel said the State has around 88.33 lakh rural households of which 38.76 lakh houses have tap water connections till March 10.
The Centre is implementing the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), in partnership with states to make provision of tap water supply to every rural household across all districts in the country by 2024.“The performance of Odisha under Jal Shakti Mission (JSM) is better than Chhattisgarh and Jharkhand as 20 pc and 19 pc households have been provided with tap water connection in the two states respectively,” he said. Odisha has utilised Rs 954.49 crore between 2019-20 and 2021-22 out of Rs 1,672.64 crore, including Rs 1,661.71 crore of Central share, available with the State government.
The State has planned to provide tap water connections to 22.53 lakh households in 2022-23 and 18.87 lakh in 2023-24. Earlier this year, the Centre had released Rs 830.85 crore to the State to provide tap water supply to rural households under JJM. The Central allocation has been increased four-fold to support Odisha in its endeavour to provide tap water to every household by 2024.