Speaker to hold meet on rural tap water scheme

Patna: Speaker Prem Kumar on Wednesday said he himself will hold a review meeting with various departments concerned to resolve the problems related to the CM rural drinking water scheme. The Speaker took this decision during the call attention motion of BJP MLAs Mithilesh Tiwari, Vinay Kumar Chaudhary and five others in the legislative assembly during Question Hour on Wednesday.

Interestingly, the ministers faced a volley of questions from the ruling NDA MLAs on different issues.


BJP MLA Tiwari and LJP(RV) state president Raju Tiwari raised questions about the functioning of CM Nitish Kumar’s ambitious Nal-Jal Yojana launched in 2016 to provide pure drinking water to all gram panchayats in Bihar.

Tiwari said the condition of the tap water scheme for every household across the state is extremely poor. Either pipes are broken or tap water supply is out of service due to non-payment of electricity bills. Land disputes and the lack of payment of honorariums for tap water caretakers are crippling the scheme, they said.

Responding to the questions, PHED minister Sanjay Kumar Singh said a decision has been taken to maintain the process of operation, repair, and maintenance of the schemes in rural areas of the state.

Singh also said the tap water scheme had not been properly implemented by the mukhiyas in the past. The PHED is now carrying out repair work. This is one reason why the tap water scheme is affected in many places, the minister said.

The debate on this issue continued before the Speaker said that he would personally call a meeting to discuss the improved implementation of this scheme.

Tiwari said 67,053 schemes were implemented in 8,053 villages across the state, but in most locations, the drinking water pumps installed are not working. He said only Rs22.50 crore has been allocated for the maintenance of such a large network, which is very low.

The minister said the urban development and housing department (UDHD) is responsible for providing clean drinking water in the cities, while the PHED and panchayati raj departments look after it in rural areas. He admitted that regulations were not followed when installing the pumps.

LJP(RV) MLA Tiwari said under this scheme, the then ward members had installed pumps on their land, but they were changed in subsequent elections. The funds are transferred to the new ward members for payment to the landowners. The new ward member does not pay the old one. He said many pumps are out of service due to landowners not receiving timely payments.

He urged the Speaker to convene a meeting of the departments concerned to review the issue under his supervision. Considering the seriousness of this problem, the Speaker announced that he would convene a review meeting under his supervision to resolve it.