Jal Jeevan Mission facing severe challenges in State

Jaipur: The Jal Jeevan Mission in Rajasthan is facing severe challenges, leading to the state falling behind in the country’s rankings.

As of now, the state has not achieved its target of 50 lakh connections, with a performance rate being just 42 percent. With this, Rajasthan is at 12th place across the country in terms of implementation.

This struggle has been ongoing since September 2021 when the government started appointing IAS officer as the mission director, who were previously an engineer. Over the past two years, five mission directors have been replaced— Prithviraj (4 months), Prakash Rajpurohit (3 months), Pratap Singh (3 months), Kumar Pal Gautam (20 days) and Avichal Chaturvedi (One year).

Avichal Chaturvedi, a young IAS officer of 2012 batch, had barely brought the work of the mission back on track in a year, when two days ago the government transferred him too and given the responsibility of Alwar collector. No one has been appointed as the mission director after him. In the past also the post had remained vacant for many days.

PHED is the parent department of the mission. The Mission Director has to work under the head of the department but coordination and cooperation between the two is a major problem.

First there was a clash between ACS Sudhansh Pant and Prithviraj. Then coordination between ACS Subodh Agarwal and Prakash Rajpurohit, and Subodh Agarwal and Pratap Singh was lacking. Somehow a working relationship had developed between Subodh Agarwal and Avichal Chaturvedi but now the government transferred Avichal.

It is said that in reality even Avichal was not comfortable here and was requesting for change. Another problem, sources reveal, is that the technical officers of PHED have not taken it lightly that an IAS officer is sitting in Jal Bhawan.

They want their own chief engineer to only be the “boss”. Knowledgeable sources, who have a detailed idea of the mission, claim that “For such a huge project a full time IAS officer is needed.”

It thus remains to be seen how and whom the government appoints as the new mission director. But there is no scope for experiment in this matter.