The village panchayats will now independently manage the operations and maintenance of drinking water and sewerage in the rural areas of Haryana. Chief Secretary Anurag Rastogi held a review meeting with the deputy commissioners of all districts in the state via video-conferencing on Monday.
Following the meeting, Mahendragarh Deputy Commissioner Anupama Anjali stated that the government had empowered the village panchayats to manage and operate drinking water supply and take administrative decisions in this regard. “The panchayats will be able to revise drinking water rates as per their requirement, implement new rates and also cut the illegal connections,” she said.
The officials concerned have been instructed to implement the Public Private Partnership -based Operation and Maintenance Policy-2026 on the ground soon for the operation and maintenance of the rural water systems.
“The process of signing a five-year memorandum of understanding (MoU) between the Public Health Engineering Department and the panchayats will also begin soon,” said the DC. She directed the District Development and Panchayat Officer to immediately convene village meetings for the 40 gram panchayats included in the Single Village Panchayats scheme and complete the process of signing an MoU with the Public Health Engineering Department.
The scheme will be implemented in two phases. The first phase will include approximately 4,000 village panchayats with a single panchayat maintenance plan, while the second phase will implement the scheme in the panchayats with more than one village.
Under the new operational policy, one woman will be deployed for every 500 households to handle drinking water connections, water sampling, bill filing, and other related tasks. For more than 500 households, two women will be assigned this responsibility. Women from self-help groups will be given priority for the task. The women deployed for the job will be provided incentives based on the terms and conditions of their work.
The panchayats will form a five-member Village Water and Sewerage Committee to manage the drinking water and sewerage work. This committee will include a junior engineer (JE) from the Public Health Engineering Department, the village secretary, the pump operator/manager, and aware citizens of the village.
The DC directed the officials concerned to activate the women’s self-help groups at the villages so that the selected women could be trained under the scheme. The Public Health Engineering Department and the Panchayat Department were also directed to coordinate and provide scheme-related training to all sarpanches, village secretaries and junior engineers.
