Bengal No. 1 in providing tap water connections to households this fiscal

Kolkata: Bengal has topped among all states in providing tap water connections to households in this financial year from April till December. The total number of connections provided by the state government is 1572040 till December in the ongoing financial year 2021-22. A total of 3042513 connections have been achieved till date under the 'Jal Swapna project'.

Karnataka is second in the list with 1416218 connections in this fiscal year till December, followed by Bihar, Odisha and Tamil Nadu.

In the month of December alone, Bengal has provided tap water connections to 269854 households, the highest among all states. Karnataka is second in this list while Assam is in the third spot.

Ranked 9th, Uttar Pradesh is far behind. Rajasthan stands 10th while Gujarat languishes in the 14th spot.

Among the districts in Bengal from January 1, 2021, till December 31, 2021 — Nadia has provided the highest number of connections at 54924. Followed by Murshidabad with 25283 connections, Bankura with 23823 and North 24-Parganas with 20652 connections.

"Under the instructions of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, we are committed to providing potable drinking water to every single household in Bengal in mission mode and all our engineers and concerned officials are working hard in this regard," Pulak Roy, state Public Health Engineering (PHE) minister said, adding that the state is poised to top among all other states by the end of 2021-22 fiscal.

The PHE department has set a target of ensuring tap water connections to 1 crore households by the end of this fiscal. It has taken up another scheme to ensure connections to more households at the earliest. The department has identified villages where there is an inadequate supply of drinking water and took up separate schemes for separate villages for commissioning of "stand-alone" tap water connections in the coming four months till March 2022 besides ensuring a maximum number of household connections. There are around 4,292 such villages with around one to 49 houses in each while each of the 6,437 villages has around 50 to 99 houses and 10,729 villages have around one to 99 houses each.