VIJAYAWADA: The Centre has increased its grant to Andhra Pradesh under the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) in the year 2021-22 to Rs 3,182.88 crore from Rs 790.48 crore in 2020-21. Union Minister (Jal Shakti) Gajendra Singh Shekhawat, while approving the four-fold increase in allocation, has assured full assistance to the State for making provision of tap water supply in every rural home by 2024. In Andhra Pradesh, out of a total of 95.66 lakh households in 18,650 villages, 46.89 lakh (49.02%) have tap water connections.
On 15th August 2019, at the time of launch of the Jal Jeevan Mission, 30.74 lakh (32.14%) households had tap water supply. In 21 months,16.14 lakh(16.88%) households in the State have been provided tap water connections, which is less than the national increase of 22%. Andhra Pradesh has to provide tap water connections to the remaining 48.77 lakh households to become ‘Har Ghar Jal’. The State has to expedite the implementation to meet the deadline.
The State has planned to provide tap water connections to 32.47 lakh households in 2021-22, 12.28 lakh in 2022-23 and 6 lakh in 2023-24 to achieve tap water supply for every rural household. In 2020-21, Andhra Pradesh could provide only 12.97 lakh tap water connections. The water supply work to provide tap water connection has not yet started in 874 villages in the State.
The pace of implementation in the State in the last quarter of 2020-21 was 2.92 lakh tap water connections per month, which has dropped to about 74,379 tap water connections per month in April and May this year. The State has to provide about 4 lakh tap water connections per month to achieve the target set for 2021- 22. In 2020-21, Rs 790.48 crore Central grant was available with the State, out of which only Rs 297.62 crore was drawn by the State. Thus, the State surrendered Rs 492.86 crore meant for tap water supply in rural areas.