Patna (Bihar): Janata Dal-United has completed five years in Bihar but has failed to keep its promise of providing tap water to every house under 'Nal Jal Yojna'. During the last assembly elections, the party had released its manifesto which talked about supplying water to all the cities of Bihar. But even after completing its tenure, the party has not fulfilled people's expectations.
In the 2015 assembly elections too, Chief Minister Nitish Kumar spoke about the tap water scheme under which every house in urban and rural areas had to be connected with tap water.
Under this scheme, the target was to provide tap water to 12,90,881 houses in the urban areas and to 38 districts of the state. The government claims that 7,15,206 houses have been covered. However, the government lags behind in completing its target and condition of these districts is poor. It was expected that the scheme would be completed by March 2020 but it did not happen.
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Talking about the villages, the target was to reach 1,77,87,411 houses, but it is being provided only to 87,36,039 houses. Araria is the lowest with just 3% while Khagarai tops the chart with 20.1%. Purnia has the tap water supply of 9.3%, Kishanganj 8.4% and Madhepura 5.8%.
Opposition slams JDU
Taking a jibe at Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, RJD MLA Vijay Prakash said that a lot of corruption took place under this government. Attention was not paid to quality of tap water and pipelines. He further said that in the upcoming 2 months there will be a scarcity of drinking water. JDU claimed to provide tap water to every house but the ground reality is completely different.
''Benefit of this scheme is not reaching 95% of the people. Doubting the quality of the material supplied, I even asked for an inquiry but no action was taken after that. The government may be trying to get accolades under this scheme but everyone knows the reality'', said senior Congress leader and MLA Ashok Ram.
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Education and employment should be added
Political expert and former MLC Prem Kumar Mani said that the government scheme is always for the better. The government should expand its scheme by giving importance to education and employment which will benefit the people in the long run.
