Lucknow: Setting a milestone on the birth anniversary of Mahatma Gandhi and former Prime Minister Lal Bahadur Shastri, the UP government provided 1.07 lakh tap-water connections in rural areas in a single day, officials said Sunday.
While the Yogi Adityanath government has set two records in the past 20 days in terms of new tap-water connections in rural areas, several states, including Rajasthan, West Bengal, Andhra Pradesh, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra, even failed to reach the 10,000 mark, they said.
On September 17, Prime Minister Narendra Modi's birthday, the UP government set a record by providing about 1.21 lakh tap-water connections to rural households.
On Gandhi Jayanti, as many as 1.34 lakh tap-water connections were provided nationwide. Of them, UP alone accounted for over 1.07 lakh connections. The districts of Bulandshahr, Shahjahanpur, Mirzapur, Varanasi, and Gorakhpur made the most significant contributions to the record, helping the state rank first in the country.
According to an official statement, other states that provided tap-water connections on October 2 were Tamil Nadu (10064), Andhra Pradesh (3121), Maharashtra (2954), West Bengal (2159), Rajasthan (2027), Chhattisgarh (1517), Orissa (1439), Karnataka (1422), Madhya Pradesh (696), Jharkhand (627), Uttarakhand (514) whereas, in Himachal Pradesh, Bihar, Gujarat, Punjab, Arunachal Pradesh, Manipur, Sikkim, not even a single tap water connection was provided on the day.
The Yogi government has set a target of ensuring 100 per cent saturation in drinking water in water-starved areas of Bundelkhand and Vindhya regions of the state by 2024.
Bulandshahr topped in the state by giving 7,506 tap-water connections, followed by 6,418 in Shahjahanpur, 6,054 in Mirzapur, 5,047 in Varanasi, and 4,012 in Gorakhpur. Besides, 3,681 tap -water connections were installed in Bareilly, 2,857 in Sitapur, 2,516 in Deoria, 2,356 in Meerut, 2,158 in Hardoi, 2,488 in Gonda, and 2,023 in Shravasti.
So far, under the 'Har Ghar Jal Scheme', pure drinking water is being supplied to as many as 48,43,733 houses through tap connections in Uttar Pradesh, the statement said. "Pure drinking water is being supplied from tap to households in 46,51,759 households in Odisha, 30,57,249 in Kerala, 29,28,134 in Rajasthan, 25,00,622 in Assam, 1,53,009 in Arunachal Pradesh, 14,39,077 in Jharkhand, 9,92,206 in Uttarakhand, 4,02,413 in Tripura, 3,34,864 in Manipur, and 2,57,794 in Meghalaya," it added. —ANI