Jal Swapna: More than 40 lakh get tap water connections till April

kolkata: Bengal government added another feather to its cap after the state achieved to cross the 40-lakh mark in providing tap water connections to rural households in April.

The total number of household connections till April 2022 has been 40,03,996 and in the month of April alone 1,96,337 households were provided with tap water connections according to data provided by the state Public Health and Engineering (PHE) department.

The PHE department is working on a mission mode to ensure tap water connection to 1 crore 77 lakh families under the 'Jal Swapna' project by the end of 2024. The project was kicked off in July 2020.

The Mamata Banerjee government has achieved a major milestone by becoming the top state in the country in providing tap water connections to households in the financial year 2021- 22. Bengal provided over 23.37 lakh connections in the last fiscal, well ahead of the second and third rankers Odisha and Bihar which provided 17.47 lakh and 17.39 lakh connections respectively. BJP-ruled Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh lagged far behind, providing about 9.51 and 6.57 lakh connections respectively.

Nadia has topped among all the districts in this parameter by providing 46387 connections followed by Murshidabad with 39237 and North 24-Parganas with 27527 connections respectively in the 2021-22 fiscal. The state Public Health Engineering (PHE) department which is implementing this project has taken up 2941 new and augmentation piped water supply schemes at a sanctioned cost of Rs 8399.50 crore in the financial year 2021-22.

In the recently concluded fiscal, around 56,000 schools and 38,000 Anganwadi centres were provided with running water facilities.

The state PHE minister Pulak Roy said: "We are following directions of Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee and executing the work to ensure that people get the benefits of the project at the earliest".