Assam Orders Freeze, Audit Of Jal Jeevan Mission Projects Amid Quality Row

Noting lapses in quality control and delays in project timelines, a temporary freeze has been put on all projects under the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) in Assam, the state government said on Monday. An audit of projects has been ordered.

Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) aims to deliver safe drinking water to every village and household through piped water.

"While it (JJM) has changed the rural drinking water landscape in short time, there are also a small percentage of challenges in terms of project delays and quality issues given the capacity of contractors in some parts of the State. And this the State Government wanted to correct upfront so that every household gets the potable tap water," read a release from the state government.

The development comes a day after Congress, the main opposition party in Assam, demanded CBI probe into alleged commissions being charged from contractors for allotment of work after an internal letter of Assam government was leaked to media.

In this letter to the chief engineer, Water, Assam, mission director Kailash Karthik of JJM in the state noted that "some contractors' performances did not meet established project deadlines". The letter directed temporary cessation of ongoing construction activities until further instructions are provided after the audit.

"Five years back, Assam had among the highest targets to be covered to reach 100% coverage of the beneficiaries. The State has never ever implemented a program of such unprecedented scale, scope and ambition and the effort to cover nearly 70 Lakh rural households, across all the 25000 plus villages of the State, through over 8000 contractors by spending Rs. 19,550 crores so far - and all this in less than five years and it has been nothing short of a herculean task," said the state underlining the challenge of the project.

Aimed at bridging the rural-urban divide and improving public health, the mission's objective is to provide Functional Household Tap Connections (FHTCs) to every rural household by 2024.

As of October 6, the Jal Shakti Ministry said the mission has provided tap water connections to 15.19 crore rural households, ensuring 78.58 per cent of rural homes now have access to potable water, a sharp increase from the 17 per cent coverage when the programme began.

At the time of JJM's launch on 15th August 2019, only 1.6% of Assam's rural population had access to Functional Household Tap Connections (FHTCs) - just 1.1 lakh connections. This was the lowest among all states and far below the then national average of 17%.

"There are allegations of work being allocated with commission of 8 to 13 percent, so if the chief minister is not related to this I urge upon him to show the transparency and order a CBI probe on this issue," said Assam Congress Chief Bhupen Borah on Sunday.