Jal Jeevan Mission: Karnataka, Centre on collision course?

Officials said the Centre allocated funds and fixed targets without consulting the state, leading to waste of money

Even as Union Jal Shakti Minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat is said to have pulled up the state for its slow pace of works under Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), officials here lament that the Centre is heavily focused on “numbers” and not on the functionality of the tap water connections under the programme.

Under JJM, Karnataka aims to provide tap water connections to 91.12 lakh rural households in the state. Until now, the government has been able to achieve about 30 lakh connections. In a review meeting of the programme, Shekhawat is said to have asked officials to speed up works, expressing unhappiness over the pace.

However, officials in the Rural Development and Panchayat Raj department said not all regions in the state had sustainable water sources and it was futile to give tap connections without planning water supply first.

Read | Jal Jeevan: Karnataka pulled up for slow progress

They also said the Centre allocated funds and fixed targets without consulting the state, leading to waste of money. According to data available on the Jal Jeevan Mission portal, Karnataka has spent only Rs 328 crore out of the available fund of Rs 10,000 crore.

“There are places where there is no river water source and borewells fail frequently. What is the point in providing taps that cannot be used? We need to first address the issue of water availability,” an official in the department said.

Another official pointed out that in districts like Kolar, Chikkaballapur, Bengaluru Urban and Bengaluru Rural, borewells are at a depth of 1,200-1,600 ft. “We need to also think about the cost incurred. Our estimate is that this programme will cost over Rs 45,000 crore in the next three years. This means, we have to utilise about Rs 15,000 crore per year,” the official added.

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Officials estimate that Karnataka would require a minimum of four years to complete the project, if the government were to ensure water supply before giving the tap connections.

Former Congress minister Eshwar Khandre, who had earlier raised concerns about the project’s implementation in the Legislative Assembly, told DH that the programme lacked planning when it came to identifying water sources in each district.

The government should also make use of existing infrastructure, he said. “Pipelines have already been laid across villages as part of previous programmes such as the National Rural Water Development Programme, Jala Nirman Project, among others,” he said.