Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman on February 1 extended Jal Jeevan Mission to 2028 with enhanced outlay to ensure all rural households have tap connections.
Presenting the Budget 2025-26, Sitharaman said since the inception of the scheme in 2019, the government achieved 80 percent coverage of the rural population under Jal Jeevan Mission.
What is Jal Jeevan Mission?
The Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) was launched in 2019 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi to ensure access to drinking water to every rural household by 2024 through tap connections.
The government plans to sign MoUs with states and union territories to ensure efficiency of water service delivery, Sitharaman said.
The department of drinking water and sanitation (DDWS), which comes under the Jal Shakti ministry, is responsible for the programme.
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At the time of launch of the scheme, the government said only 3.23 crore (or 17 percent) of rural households had tap water connections. The mission aims to bridge this gap by providing nearly 16 crore additional households with tap water.
As of October 6, 2024, the mission had provided tap water connections to 11.95 crore additional rural households, bringing the total coverage to more than 15.19 crore, which accounts for 78.58 percent of all such households in the country.
For the fiscal 2024-25, the Jal Jeevan Mission was allocated Rs 70,163 crore, a marginal increase from Rs 70,000 crore allocated in the previous fiscal (FY24).
The total estimated cost of the Jal Jeevan Mission amounted to Rs 3.6 lakh crore over five years from 2019 to 2024.
Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman presented the first full Budget of Modi 3.0 in Parliament on February 1.
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