Setting another milestone on the occasion of the birth anniversaries of Mahatma Gandhi and former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri on October 2, the Yogi Adityanath-led government in Uttar Pradesh provided as many as 1.07 lakh tap water connections in the rural parts of the state in a single day.

While Uttar Pradesh has set two records in the last 20 days in terms of providing tap water connections in rural areas, many states, including Rajasthan, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, and Maharashtra, have failed to even reach the 10,000 mark.

Earlier, the Yogi government had set a record on September 17 by providing about 1.21 lakh tap water connections in rural households in the state which coincided with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s 72nd birthday.

It may be noted that on Gandhi Jayanti, as many as 1.34 lakh tap connections were provided nationwide. The districts of Bulandshahr, Shahjahanpur, Mirzapur, Varanasi, and Gorakhpur made the biggest contributions to connecting most of these households to tap water, helping the state rank first in the nation.

Not a single connection was given in Bihar, Punjab. Of the 1,34,968 tap water connections provided in the country, UP alone accounted for over 1,07,774 connections. As per data, other states that provided tap water connections on October 2 were Tamil Nadu (10,064), Andhra Pradesh (3,121), Maharashtra (2,954), West Bengal (2,159), Rajasthan (2,027), Chhattisgarh (1,517), Odisha (1,439), Karnataka (1,422), Madhya Pradesh (696), Jharkhand (627), Uttarakhand (514) whereas in Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Punjab, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Sikkim, not even a single tap water connection was provided on the day.

The Yogi government 2.0 has set a target of ensuring 100 per cent saturation in drinking water in water starved areas of Bundelkhand and Vindhya regions of the state by 2024. Among the districts, Bulandshahr topped by giving 7,506 tap water connections, followed by 6,418 in Shahjahanpur, 6,054 in Mirzapur, 5,047 in Varanasi, and 4,012 in Gorakhpur. Besides, 3,681 tap water connections were installed in Bareilly, 2,857 in Sitapur, 2,516 in Deoria, 2,356 in Meerut, 2,158 in Hardoi, 2,488 in Gonda, and 2,023 in Shravasti.

So far, under the Har Ghar Jal Scheme, pure drinking water is being supplied to as many as 48,43,733 houses through tap connections in Uttar Pradesh. Pure drinking water is being supplied from tap to 46,51,759 households in Odisha, 30,57,249 in Kerala , 29,28,134 in Rajasthan, 25,00,622 in Assam, 1,53,009 in Arunachal Pradesh, 14,39,077 in Jharkhand, 9,92,206 in Uttarakhand, 4,02,413 in Tripura, 3,34,864 in Manipur, and 2,57,794 in Meghalaya.