Raj bureaucracy’s internal strife makes Jal Jeevan Mission suffer!

Jaipur: The situation in Jal Jeevan Mission is extremely worrysome as the national project, worth Rs 60,000 crore, has fallen behind in its implementation due to which Rajasthan is at the last place (29th) across the nation. 1.05 crore tap connections are to be given across the state under the project which is to be completed in 2024, however, merely 26 lakh connections have been provided since the start of the project in 2019.

project in 2019. A target of merely 32 lakh connections is to be achieved in the current year, but over the past 4 months, merely 2.20 lakh connections have been provided. The reason for such a bad shape of the mission is the frequent changing of Mission Director as over the past three years, 4 Mission Directors (All IAS) have been changed viz Prithvi Raj, Pratap Singh, Prakash Rajpurohit and Kumar Pal Gautam. But perhaps an even more worrysome aspect is that as on today, the post of Mission Director is lying vacant. On July 4, Kumar Pal Gautam was given the aditional charge, but in the transfer list dated August 1, Kumar Pal was transferred to the post of Excise Commissioner and Jal Jeevan Mission was left on its own. DoP did not undertake any posting for this important project and now the position of Mission Director is lying vacant. During the initial stages, a Chief Engineer of PHED - Dinesh Goyal - was the Mission Director of JJM, but in Spetember 2019, on the advice of the then ACS, PHED — Sudhansh Pant — the state government handed the responsibility to IAS officers. But perhps where the DoP went wrong was not appointing a full time IAS, rather handing the reponsibility, as additional charge, to secretary of Water Resources - Prithvi Raj. But this created more problems and due to a ‘tug-ofwar’ between Pant and Prithvi, the latter had to be removed merely after 4 months. 

Then, 2016 batch IAS Pratap Singh was appointed as ‘full-time’ Mission Director, but he came in a tussle with ACS Subodh Agrawal and was shunted out. After Singh came 2010 batch IAS Prakash Rajpurohit but after merely thre months, he too was shunted out and Kumar pal was given additional charge, but since he too left, hence the post is lying vacant. Sources, reveal that the technical officers of PHED have not taken it lightly that an IAS is sitting in Jal Bhawan. They want that one of the 4 Chief Engineers posted in Jaipur - Dinesh Goyal, RK Meena, Manish Beniwal and KD Gupta - should be given this responsibility. But knowledgeable sources, who have a detailed idea of the Mission, claim that for such a huge project a full time IAS is needed. Now the state government is in dilemma as to what should it do? Due to delay in decision, the post is lying vacant. But DoP has its own problem i.e. from where to bring an IAS befitting for the important role, one who is approved of by the ‘heirarchy’, right from minister to babus of various wings. The state government would do well to keep experimentation at bay, in order to better the situation of Jal Jeevan Mission.