GUWAHATI: The Northeastern hilly state of Mizoram stands at the top in providing tap water to highest percentage of households (85.68) among states from the Northeast, but Assam, although blessed with vast plains, featured among the states performing worst by covering only 49.15% of the population.
This fact came to light even as PM Narendra Modi on Wednesday expressed his pleasure at achieving the milestone of 12 crore houses provided with tap water connections, under the Centre’s Jal Jeevan Mission.
The JJM official dashboard said that, of the 1,33,060 households in Mizoram, a total of 1,14,007 households have been provided with tap water supply, accounting for a coverage of 85.68%, according to the Jal Shakti ministry website’s data.
Kolasib district of Mizoram performed best among the eight districts of the state, having attained 96.67% coverage. From merely 15.36% tap water coverage, delivering water to 1,388 households out of the small number of 9,038 households in Kolasib, when JJM was launched on August 15, 2019, it now has come a long way to lead through example, government officials said. Although 16 of the 34 villages in the district have tap water connections, covering 100% of the households till now, work is progressing in the rest 18 villages.
In the second and third places in terms of tap water coverage, Serchhip and Aizawl districts have covered 91.7% and 90.30% households, respectively, having tap water supply. Lawngtlai district with coverage of highest 27,158 households finds its place at the bottom of the list among the Mizoram districts. But with 75.21% coverage, it is still performing better than the coverage achieved by more than a dozen of the other states.
Arunachal Pradesh has achieved second best coverage of 77.54%, among the rest of the northeastern states, by ensuring tap water connection to 1,78,547 of 2,30,275 total households in the frontier state with remote and inaccessible areas.
Next in the list is Manipur with 76.58% tap water coverage, faring better than many states.
Coming in the next place is Nagaland, having achieved 67.42% coverage. Ironically, Kiphire district, tagged as one of the most backward districts in the country by NITI Ayog, has the best coverage of 83.68%.
As of Wednesday, the state of Tripura has recorded 62.74% coverage.
At the bottom of the list comes Meghalaya and Assam, which are the worst performing states in the Northeast region. Assam features at the bottom with only 49.15% coverage.
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