Jal Jeevan Mission Guidelines
Under JJM, States/ UTs are to plan for achieving drinking water security and to provide FHTC to every rural household. It may not be feasible for State Government/ Department to manage water supply to everyone and therefore role of Gram Panchayat and/ or its sub-committee/ local community becomes critical in planning, implementation, management, operation and maintenance of water supply within the villages. Moreover, Panchayats have a constitutional mandate to manage drinking water. Further, it is necessary that within the villages, local community/Gram Panchayat and/ or its sub-committee, i.e. VWSC/Paani Samiti/ User Group, etc. plays the key role for O&M, cost recovery, and good governance. To achieve the objective of JJM, following strategy may be adopted:
Committees of SWSM
The SWSM has i.) Apex Committee, and ii.) Executive Committee.
The Apex Committee is headed by the Chief Secretary of the State with Secretaries in-charge of PHE/Rural Water Supply, Rural Development (RD), Panchayati Raj (PR), Primary Education, Health, Finance, Planning, Information and Public Relations and a Government of India representative as members. In addition, three experts/eminent persons working in the field of rural water supply, public service, natural resource management, community development, etc. are also the members of the Apex Committee.
The functions of Apex committee are:
- Re-verification and firming of baseline data of household tap connections by States/ UTs before March, 2020
- FHTC may be planned to be provided in every household with three delivery points (taps),viz. kitchen, washing & bathing area and toilet.
- The rural water supply infrastructure created over the years is to be dovetailed, retrofitted and renovated to provide FHTCs.
- Priority will be accorded to retrofit on-going piped water supply schemes and subsequently to completed piped water supply schemes providing water through stand post.
- In villages with sufficient groundwater availability of prescribed quality within the village boundary, the same local water source will be used.
- In villages with functional hand pumps, the depth can be deepened if required and can also be used as a source to meet the service delivery level.
- In villages with functional hand pumps, the depth can be deepened if required and can also be used as a source to meet the service delivery level.
- In tribal/ hilly/ forested areas, option of gravity and/ or solar power-based water supply schemes with low O&M expenditure to be explored and preferred.
- In hills and mountains, springs as a reliable source for drinking water to be explored.
- In hot and cold deserts, innovative approaches and possibility technology intervention will be explored.
- In villages with sufficient groundwater availability but having quality issues, in-situ suitable treatment technology may be explored.
- In villages falling in drought-prone areas, conjunctive use of multiple sources of water can be such as ponds, lakes, rivers, groundwater, supply from long distance, rainwater harvesting and/ or artificial recharge.