The District Magistrate (DM) of West Burdwan District, S. Ponnambalam, has stated that by March of next year, every household in panchayat areas will be provided with a drinking water connection under the Har Ghar Jal (HGJ) Mission. He has said that so far, in the eight panchayat samity areas, one hundred per cent tap water connections have been provided in 87 villages of 62 gram panchayat areas in West Burdwan District.

To date, tap water connections have reached 2,53,795 households in rural areas of West Burdwan district. Speaking to The Statesman, S. Ponnambalam inf – ormed that the district has completed about 67 per cent of its target and said he hopes that the remaining work will be completed by March 2025. “We will hold a review meeting of the project in November. Pipeline laying and digging work are currently underway, and the Public Health Engineering Department (PHED) has been entrusted with the pipeline laying job,” the DM added.

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Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had in the 2019 Union budget announced the Har Ghar Jal Programme, which aimed to provide safe drinking water through pipelines in each household in rural areas. The target was to achieve 100 per cent tap water connection in rural India by 2024, although it is facing delays. In 2018, the World Health Organization (WHO) published data indicating that about 1,25,995 people died in India in that year due to diarrhoea after consuming infected drinking water.

Following this, the Union Government took steps to provide filtered and safe drinking water to village areas of the country under the Har Ghar Jal Scheme. However , due to digging and laying of pipelines, the condition of the roads in rural areas has worsened. The DM said that the PHED has been pressured to repair the roads after completing the pipeline laying work.Out of the eight panchayat samity areas, Kanksha block has topped so far with over 94.93 per cent job completion, providing 47,673 new connections out of a total of 50,219 households.

Kanksha block is followed by Barabani Block with 87.52 per cent, Raniganj block with 76.74 per cent, Salanpur block with 65.94 per cent, Faridpur-Durgapur block with 63.59 per cent, Pandaveswar block with 52.76 per cent, Andal block with 52.32 per cent, and Jamuria with 39.46 per cent. However, while house connections have been provided in the eight panchayat samity areas, water supply remains irregular in many villages. Jal Jeevan Mission Har Ghar Jal is a flagship program of the Narendra Modi government aimed at providing every rural household with a tap water connection by 2024 throughout the country.