Faced with the daunting task of supplying drinking water to the rural areas, the Narendra Modi Government has threatened the States to perform or else return the fund released under the Centrally-sponsored National Drinking Water Security Pilot Project aimed at development and management of water resources in over-exploited blocks in the country.
The project is being implemented in 15 blocks facing severe water crisis in 11 States — Gujarat, Haryana, Tamil Nadu, Punjab, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Andhra Pradesh and Maharashtra since 2012. Since one of the 15 blocks, Mothey, falls in Telangana, the State was added automatically following the bifurcation of Andhra Pradesh.
“In a recent meeting held to review the performance of the project, we found that blocks Dhuri (Punjab) Kaithal( Haryana), Agra (Uttar Pradesh) and Gorantala in Arunanchal Pradesh reflected worst progress while Jhansi (Uttar Pradesh), Kheralu (Gujarat), Warud and Morshi (both in Maharashtra) Piler (Andhra Pradesh) and Mothey in Telangana have shown moderate progress as far as implementation of the project is concerned,” a senior official from the Water and Sanitation Ministry said.
He said that the States have been asked to pull up their socks or return the fund that they have received for the implementation of the project.
The official pointed out that in some blocks the mandatory Support Organisation was not formed while in a few other their term had expired but no steps were taken to set up the new one. Also, mandatory district core meeting to review the scheme at the block level were not being held, in many Gram Panchayatas rain gauges were not installed.
“Not only we have decided to revoke the fund from poor performers, we might take necessary action against them,” he said but refused to elaborate on the steps the Ministry intends to take.
However, there were good performers as well. Mulbagal in Karnataka, Morrapur in Tamil Nadu, Raipur in Rajasthan, Rampur Bhelgan and Piploda, both in Madhya Pradesh exhibited good performance by implementing all the guidelines outlines in the project. The Ministry has also asked the States to improve sanitation interventions and given equal importance to water supply so as to meet the goal of making the country open-defecation free by 2022.
The program aims at conducting pilots on convergent action for sustainability and Gram Panchayat level monitoring and management of water resources to achieve drinking water security in selected over exploited blocks of the States.