The Uttar Pradesh government is racing against time to provide more than a third of the population of dry and backward Bundelkhand and Vindhya regions with piped drinking water under the Centre's Jal Jeevan Mission by December end, as the state braces for the assembly polls in early 2022.
Water scarcity has been one of the biggest issues plaguing these regions and few households have so far received supply of water under the programme in these regions. Separately, the state government is targeting to more than double the number of households covered under the scheme across the state to 75 lakh by the end of the current financial year in March, 2022.
While UP boasts of being the top performing state in 44 Central schemes -- a campaign point for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party -- it is the least performing state in Jal Jeevan Mission that envisions providing safe and adequate drinking water through tap connections to all households in rural India by 2024.
According to data, 33.40 lakh, or less than 13 per cent, of the households in the state have tap-water supply. While it is true that UP has the highest number of houses considering its size, even in the absolute number of households connected, the state is far behind those like Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh.
With the absence of surface water in the nine districts of Bundelkhand and Vindhya regions, the process has been particularly challenging but work on laying infrastructure for piped-water supply is now progressing fast, with the state having completed 43.5 per cent of the work required, ahead of the 34 per cent progress it had targeted for September-end.
According to an official of Namami Gange and Rural Water Supply department, work related to the project will be completed or begun in more than 50,000 villages by the end of the current fiscal. There are about 98,000 villages in UP and currently work has either started or completed in 38,000 villages. All the seats in the legislative assembly from the nine districts in the two regions are held by the BJP or ally Apna Dal (Sonelal), which has a seat each in Mirzapur and Sonbhadra in the Vindhya region