Uttarakhand: All schools and anganwadi centres in the country will be connected by tapped water supply within 100 days under Jal Jeevan Mission starting from October 2, announced Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The PM made the announcement while inaugurating six mega projects in Uttarakhand under the Namami Gange Mission through video-conferencing. “To fight challenges of water scarcity in many parts of the country, Jal Jeevan Mission is working towards giving piped water connectivity to all villages in the country and promoting gram swarajya (village self-sufficiency) and empowering the villages. “Under Jal Jeevan Mission, a 100-day campaign will start from October 2.
Under which it will be ensured that all schools and aganwadi centres in the country are connected with tap water supply,” said the Prime Minister. The state governments have been told to take up this project on priority and complete it within 100 days. “Over 15 crore houses were not connected with water supply till six years ago. Now around 1 lakh houses are being connected with clean piped water supply every day and the Jal Shakti ministry is working at a fast pace to increase this number. In just one year, over 2 crore families in the country have been given piped water connections.
The Uttarakhand government is working one step ahead; they are working on giving water connectivity to each and every house at Re 1 only and over 50,000 families have been given water connectivity in Uttarakhand in the past six months, despite the Covid-19 epidemic,” said Modi.Talking about government vision about Ganga, PM Modi said that the government is not just focused on making the river pollution-free but also working on holistic economic development and protecting the ecology of the area along Ganga.“From its source near Gangotri till Ganga Sagar, river Ganga supports almost 50% of the population of the country. Many projects were taken up in the past to clean Ganga river but it is still polluted.
We worked with a new approach and vision which was not only restricted to cleaning the river but took it up as the largest river conservation project in the country. “The PM said that the Namami Gange Mission is being taken to the next step now, where the focus will also be economic development of areas set up along the river. “The focus will not just be on Swachhta of Ganga river, but on holistic economic and environmental development of all areas set up along river Ganga.
The Central government is working to promote organic farming and cultivation of medicinal plants along the river and making an organic corridor,” he added. Listing the four-point approach of the central government towards making Ganga pollution-free, PM Modi said, “We followed a systematic approach towards cleaning Ganga which focused on tapping over 130 drains opening into Ganga and restricting the entry of polluted water into the river. ”Along with this, we made sure that all the STPs being set up for river Ganga have the capacity of working long-term, minimum for the next ten years.
Further in these past years, 100 cities and 5,000 villages along Ganga have been declared as open defecation-free, further reducing pollution sources. The fourth approach is to now ensure that tributaries joining Ganga are also made pollution-free,” said the Prime Minister. The PM inaugurated a sewage treatment plant (STP) with capacity of 68 million litres per day (MLD), up-gradation of the existing 27 MLD at Jagjeetpur in Haridwar and a new 18 MLD STP at Sarai in Haridwar.
Along with this, a 26 MLD STP was inaugurated at Lakkadghat in Rishikesh, country’s first four-storey 7.5 MLD STP at Chandreshwar Nagar in Muni ki Reti town in Tehri Garhwal district, five MLD STP at Chorpani, and two STPs with capacities of 1 MLD and 0.01 MLD at Badrinath. The Haridwar-Rishikesh zone contributes about 80% wastewater load into the River Ganga. Hence, the inauguration of these STPs will play a significant role in keeping river Ganga clean.
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