Major constraints in implementing Jal Jeevan Mission: Parl panel report
The panel, presenting its third report on demands for grants (2025-26) for the Jal Shakti ministry, also questioned officials on the reasons behind a sharp cut in funding for the programme in 2024-25 compared to previous years.
At least 17 statesstill face “major constraints and problems” in implementing the Jal Jeevan Mission, a marquee programme to connect every rural household with a tap-water connection, slowing its progress, a parliamentary standing committee said in a report tabled in both houses on Tuesday.
The standing committee on water resources said in the report that central authorities overseeing the countrywide project, which requires heavy engineering to lay pipes from water sources to doorsteps, assured the panel that “regular review meetings at highest level” with states along with field visits were being undertaken to speed up processes in laggard states.
The panel, presenting its third report on demands for grants (2025-26) for the Jal Shakti ministry, also questioned officials on the reasons behind a sharp cut in funding for the programme in 2024-25 compared to previous years. The mission was allocated ₹21,979 crore during the year, a drop of nearly 68% from ₹69,992 crore in the previous year.
The department of drinking water, in its reply to panel, said the finance ministry ramped up funding for the current financial year. “For expeditious implementation of Jal Jeevan Mission in 2025-26, an amount of ₹67,000 crore has now been proposed by Ministry of Finance (MoF),” the panel’s report said, quoting the reply.
The panel observed that “frequent drastic reduction of budgetary provisions at RE (revised estimates) stage and subsequently enhancing the BE (budget estimates) for next financial year indicates lack of proper planning”.
Getting to a water source is a long haul in most of rural India. According to a 2013 National Sample Survey Organisation survey, in Jharkhand, it took women 40 minutes one way, without considering the waiting time. In Bihar, it was 33 minutes and in Uttar Pradesh, 38 minutes. The water mission aims to change this drudgery.
So far, 11 states and Union territorieshave achieved their target of 100% coverage ahead of deadline. These include Goa, Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Dadra and Nagar Haveli, Gujarat, Haryana, Telangana, Puducherry, Punjab, Himachal Pradesh, Arunachal Pradesh and Mizoram.
According to the report, 30.9 million households across states have yet to get pipe infrastructure and “more than 99.5% of such households are concentrated in 17 states and Union territories.”
When Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the programme in August 2019, only one-sixth of India’s roughly 192 million households across 600,000 villages had a functional water tap. As on date, 80.15% of these households have been provided a connection under the mission.
Many of these states were reported to have encountered “long gestation period”, lack of “dependable ground water sources”, contamination and terrain challenges, hampering progress.
“Major part of the work remains to be completed in West Bengal, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala and Jharkhand which have so far achieved coverage of only 54.51%, 55.39%, 67.29%, 54.25% and 54.66% respectively,” the report said.
States with a lower rate of connections than the national average include West Bengal, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh, Kerala, Jharkhand, Andhra Pradesh, Odisha, Chhattisgarh, Meghalaya, Manipur and Nagaland.
