Question : Shortage of Drinking Water

(a) whether the Government has taken any steps to formulate a long term planning for assessing and tackling the storage of drinking water in the future and if so, the details thereof;
(b) the number of villages out of the total villages in the country which do not have access to clean drinking water as on date, State/UT-wise;
(c) the action plan to provide clean drinking water to those villages during the next five years, year-wise; and
(d) the details of targets set for providing clean drinking water to all the villages?

MINISTER OF STATE FOR DRINKING WATER AND SANITATION
(SHRI S. S. AHLUWALIA)
a) Rural drinking Water Supply is a State subject. Under National Rural Drinking Water Programme (NRDWP), this Ministry provides financial and technical assistance to States for providing safe drinking water in rural areas. To enhance the availability of drinking water, the Ministry has suggested adopting water conservation measures like roof top rainwater harvesting, erecting sustainability structures for water conservation etc. Moreover Hydro Geomorphological Maps (HGM) is being used for accurately locating new drinking water sources in the field. In this way Government of India assists various State Governments for taking steps to cover rural habitations and households with adequate safe drinking water supply on a continuous basis. Further, the focus of the Ministry now is to move towards rural water supply schemes based on safe and perennial surface water sources to ensure long term sustainability of source and drinking water security in the event of crisis.
(b) This Ministry maintains information in terms of habitations instead of number of villages. As per information available on Integrated Management Information System (IMIS) of this Ministry, State / UT-wise number of habitations which do not have access to clean drinking water i.e. Quality Affected habitations (i.e. containing at least one contaminant) is at Annexure.
(c) & (d) This Ministryhas prepared a Strategic Plan for the rural drinking water sector for the period 2011-2022 for providing the piped water supply in the rural areas. As per this, by 2022, the goal is to ensure that at least 90% of rural households are provided with piped water supply, at least 80% of rural households have piped water supply with a household connection.
The execution of rural drinking water supply schemes is done by the State governments after getting the same approved by the State Level Scheme Sanctioning Committee (SLSSC). The Ministry has written to the States to take up schemes to provide long time solution of providing drinking water to habitations affected by contamination on an urgent basis . As a short term measure the States have been asked to provide at least 8 to 10 litres of potable drinking water to habitations affected by arsenic and fluoride contamination on an urgent basis through community water purification plants.