Post state's annual action plan, Centre allocates over Rs 6K cr for tap water supply

Kolkata: Following the state's annual action plan for the current fiscal, the Centre on Tuesday allocated a grant of Rs 6,998.97 crore to the state for its 2021-22 fiscal to ensure tap water supply to the maximum number of households in the state.

This comes when the Mamata Banerjee government is also implementing its Rs 58,000 crore worth Jal Swapna project to provide tap water connection to 2.5 crore households by 2024.

The state Public Health Engineering department has placed its annual action plans for the fiscal in a recently held meeting with the National Jal Jeevan Mission under the Ministry of Jal Shakti. The Centre has allocated the amount under its project Jal Jeevan Mission.

The Central allocation for the year 2019-20 was Rs. 995.33 Crores, which was increased to Rs. 1,614.18 Crore in 2020-21. Union Minister, Jal Shakti Gajendra Singh Shekhawat approved the allocation.

It needs to be mentioned that the percentage has increased by 8.58 percent to 9.90 percent as tap water connection has been provided to 14 lakh households in the past 21 months.

In 2020-21, tap water connection was ensured at 12.48 lakh houses. The state government has prepared a road map to provide tap water connections to 43.10 lakh rural homes in 2021-22 and 52.74

lakh in 2022-23 and 2023-24 fiscals.

The state government has also started providing piped tap water supply in schools and Anganwadi centres. In 2020-21, the same will be provided to 10,046 schools and 6,430 Anganwadi centres.