2.24 lakh rural households in Nagaland connected with tap water

DIMAPUR: Altogether, 2.24 lakh rural households out of the total 3.70 lakh in Nagaland have been connected with tap water supply as on March 13, 2023. This was informed by the Minister of State for Jal Shakti, Prahlad Singh Patel, in a written reply in Lok Sabha on Thursday.

While in the year 2019, Nagaland had only 3.78% of rural household connected with tap water supply, it has increased to 60.52% as on March 13, 2023, he informed.

Since August 2019, Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), a centrally sponsored scheme, is being implemented in partnership with states to make provision of potable tap water supply on regular and long-term basis to every rural household of the country by 2024.

As on August 2019, only 3.23 crore rural households were reported to have tap water connections in the country but so far, as on March 13, 2023, an additional 8.18 crore rural households have been provided with tap water connections under JJM.

Out of 19.42 crore rural households in the country, around 11.41 crore (58.77%) households were reported to have tap water supply in their homes and out of which 86% of households had working tap connections that was found during the functionality assessment conducted from February 2022 to April, 2022.

And out of 86% of households having working tap connections, 85% were getting water in adequate quantity, 80% were getting water regularly as per the schedule of water supply for their piped water supply scheme, and 87% of households were receiving water as per the prescribed water quality standards.

Under Jal Jeevan Mission, the central government has allocated Nagaland state a total fund of INR 484.28 crore for the year 2022-2023 and as on March 13, 2023, a total of INR 380.20 crore has been reported utilised.

In the year 2019-2020, Nagaland has utilised INR 23.54 crore out of INR 58.44 crore available fund from the central share, while for the year 2020-2021, Nagaland has utilised INR 91.95 crore out of INR 120.47 crore available fund from the central share and for the year 2021-2022 the state has utilised INR 345.14 crore out of INR 362.13 crore available fund from the central share.

In terms of Northeast states-wise status of tap water connections in rural households, Sikkim has the highest percentage of rural households connected with tap water supply with 80.13%, followed by Mizoram with 77.66%, Manipur with 76.29%, Arunachal Pradesh with 71.52%, Nagaland with 60.52%, Tripura with 59.47%, Meghalaya with 46.14% and Assam with 45.54%.