The National Jal Jeevan Mission, Ministry of Jal Shakti, has allocated Rs 3,410.61 crore grant to the state of Gujarat under the Jal Jeevan Mission for FY22, out of which the first tranche of Rs 852.65 crore has been released.
Union Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat approved the four-fold increase in allocation of grant to the state for water supply.
The Central government’s allocation for FY20 was Rs 390.31 crore, which was raised to Rs 883.08 crore in FY21. In the state during FY21, 10.94 lakh rural households have been provided tap water connections and in FY22 also, the state plans to provide more than 10 lakh households with tap water connections.
Gujarat has 92.92 lakh rural households, out of which now 77.21 lakh (83 percent) households are having piped water supply. Out of about 18, 000 villages, in more than 6,700 villages tap water supply to every household has been ensured.
In FY21, around 5,900 villages were made Har Ghar Jal by providing each and every home a functional tap water connection.
As per Annual Action Plan of the state approved by the National Jal Jeevan Mission, another 18 districts and 6,400 more villages will have 100 percent coverage with tap water supply. It is expected that in the next few months, more than 12,000 villages and 23 districts of the state will have tap water supply.
Under the 100-day campaign announced by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to provide tap water supply in schools, anganwadi centres and ashramshalas, the state government ensured tap water connections in all 29,754 rural schools and 42,279 anganwadi centres.
In 2021, the state government has planned to take up capacity building and training as one of the major activities. It is planned to train more than 8,000 people from Pani Samiti, public health engineers, ISAs, etc to ensure functionality of water supply schemes and tap water connections to every household.
The state has a total of 86 water-testing laboratories of which eight are NABL accredited. It has planned to get all district level laboratories NABL accredited in the next few months.
In a move to strengthen the monitoring of tap water provided to rural households, it has taken up smart water monitoring in 20 villages. Four pilots have already started in Dahod district. The state is planning to take over 500 villages in 2021 for internet of things based smart water supply monitoring.
