The Centre has stopped federal funding for the Jal Jeevan Mission, a flagship programme to connect rural households with tap water, with states being asked to finish the rest of the work using their own finances, the government said in a written response to a question in Rajya Sabha on Monday.
The marquee scheme, launched in 2019, aimed to link each of India’s 193.5 million rural households with tap water connections by the end of 2024. Last year, it was extended till December 2028.
Currently, 157.9 million families, or 81.5% of the beneficiaries, have been provided with a functional doorstep water tap, according to the programme’s dashboard. This includes 16.72% households which had some form of tap water supply when the mission was being rolled out.
The government had approved a federal outlay of ₹2.08 lakh crore for the programme when it was launched and almost the entire allocation has been used up, said V Somanna, the minister of state for Jal Shakti, replying to a query by Trinamool Congress MP Sushmita Dev.
“As such, no amount has been allocated to any State/UT, including Assam, in 2025-26. Additionally, water being a state subject, states have been advised to continue the implementation of ongoing works from their own resources,” the minister said.
While the minister said the Centre hadn’t allocated funds to any state in the ongoing fiscal year, the Union budget has provided outlays for continuation of the scheme till Dec 2028. The budget for 2026-27, presented on Sunday by finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, allocated ₹67,363 crore for the “programme component” of Jal Jeevan Mission against revised allocations of ₹16,944 in 2025-26, which is 74% lower than initial budget estimates of ₹66,770 crore (FY26).
However, the outlays in both years were entirely reserved for revenue expenditure, such as salaries and maintenance. No fund has been allocated for capital spending, or new asset creation.
The mission, which requires laying massive engineering infrastructure, often to link reservoirs to village tanks, has eased access for women to a vital resource in a country where nearly 600 million people face high to extreme water stress, according to a 2018 paper by the Niti Aayog, a state-run think tank.
However, nearly 35.64 million households are still to be covered and clean drinking water in rural households is one of the critical components for achieving universal access to safe drinking water in the country. According to a government statement in 2023, the programme helped to lower rural disease burden, preventing an estimated 400,000 diarrhoea deaths.
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