Kolkata: The Mamata Banerjee government has achieved yet another milestone by becoming the top state in the country in providing tap water connections to households in the financial year 2021-22.
Bengal has provided over 23.37 lakh connections in this fiscal that ended on Thursday, well ahead of the second and third ranker Odisha and Bihar which have given 17.47 lakh and 17.39 lakh connections respectively. BJP-ruled Gujarat and Uttar Pradesh are far behind providing for over only 9.51 and 6.57 lakh connections respectively.
In the month of March alone, Bengal has provided over 2.63 lakh tap water connections.
Nadia has topped among all the districts in this parameter by providing 46,387 connections followed by Murshidabad with 39,237 and North 24-Parganas with 27,527 connections respectively in the 2021-22 fiscal.
When it comes to providing tap water connections in March, Bengal has bagged the second spot with Andhra Pradesh topping the list. However, in the financial year, Andhra Pradesh has ranked eighth by providing over 9.55 lakh connections.
The state Public Health Engineering (PHE) department which is implementing this project of providing tap water connection has taken up 2,941 new and augmentation piped water supply schemes at a sanctioned cost of Rs 8399.50 crore in the financial year 2021-22.
In this fiscal, around 56,000 schools and 38,000 anganwadi centres have been provided with running water facilities.
The target of the department is to ensure tap water connection to 1 crore 77 lakh families under Jal Swapna project by the end of 2024. The project kicked off in July 2020 and nearly 38 lakh families have already been provided with tap water connections.
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."