Jaipur: According to engineers of the public health and engineering department (PHED), the Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) projects in the state are in a critical state with the state government’s new order would further delay implementation of such projects.
The government had decided to stop all the tenders where work orders had not been issued and even those tenders where construction work had not started yet after the tender had been awarded.Senior engineers of the department opined that with Lok Sabha elections barely a few months away the decision would impact the JJM projects severely.
“Because of the Model Code of Conduct and then the election along with the raids and investigations of the central agencies on a few JJM projects, the execution of JJM projects in the state affected severely in the last few months. The decision would further delay the implementation of JJM projects. Forget about 100% achievement before JJM’s deadline of December 2024, we should consider ‘lucky’ if we can achieve 50% of the target,” said a senior engineer.
According to the JJM Dashboard on the Jal Shakti Ministry’s website, Rajasthan’s rank is at the bottom only before West Bengal. The state has only provided 45.35% connections till date out of the total rural households in the state. Even a few months back Rajasthan was at the sixth or seventh position from the bottom with more than 40% households having tap water connections.
“It means barely 6% connections had been given in the past few months. This is because there had been problems in floating tender since January 2023 as the finance department was rolling back tenders citing an excessive tender amount. Now that several tenders floated before the polls would get stopped it would definitely have an adverse impact,” said another engineer.
Officials claimed the stance of the new BJP government in the state and the Union Government towards JJM projects would be an interesting thing to watch in the next one or two months. For the last few years, the Congress Government is demanding special status of Rajasthan in JJM projects. But the Jal Shakti Ministry is yet to award the special status.
“Now that we would go further away from the target before the December 2024 deadline, we have to see whether the Union Government awards the special status to Rajasthan. With Lok Sabha election round the corner anything is possible,” another PHED engineer signed off.
The government had decided to stop all the tenders where work orders had not been issued and even those tenders where construction work had not started yet after the tender had been awarded.Senior engineers of the department opined that with Lok Sabha elections barely a few months away the decision would impact the JJM projects severely.
“Because of the Model Code of Conduct and then the election along with the raids and investigations of the central agencies on a few JJM projects, the execution of JJM projects in the state affected severely in the last few months. The decision would further delay the implementation of JJM projects. Forget about 100% achievement before JJM’s deadline of December 2024, we should consider ‘lucky’ if we can achieve 50% of the target,” said a senior engineer.
According to the JJM Dashboard on the Jal Shakti Ministry’s website, Rajasthan’s rank is at the bottom only before West Bengal. The state has only provided 45.35% connections till date out of the total rural households in the state. Even a few months back Rajasthan was at the sixth or seventh position from the bottom with more than 40% households having tap water connections.
“It means barely 6% connections had been given in the past few months. This is because there had been problems in floating tender since January 2023 as the finance department was rolling back tenders citing an excessive tender amount. Now that several tenders floated before the polls would get stopped it would definitely have an adverse impact,” said another engineer.
Officials claimed the stance of the new BJP government in the state and the Union Government towards JJM projects would be an interesting thing to watch in the next one or two months. For the last few years, the Congress Government is demanding special status of Rajasthan in JJM projects. But the Jal Shakti Ministry is yet to award the special status.
“Now that we would go further away from the target before the December 2024 deadline, we have to see whether the Union Government awards the special status to Rajasthan. With Lok Sabha election round the corner anything is possible,” another PHED engineer signed off.