Centre to bring over 50,000 more villages under SBM ODF plus by next year
1 min read 31 Mar 2023, 09:05 PM ISTODF plus village is defined as a village which sustains its ODF status, ensures solid and liquid waste management and is visually clean
PremiumThe Centre is aiming at bringing over 50,000 more villages under Open Defecation Free (ODF) plus of Swachh Bharat Mission (SBM) by next year.
So far, Telangana, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka have got the ODF plus status with a coverage of 100%, 96% and nearly 94%, respectively, Jal Shakti minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat inform on Friday while addressing press.
Some other states that are working actively to achieve the ODF plus status are Himachal Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Uttar Pradesh and Mizoram.
The base of SBM is converge of fund. Therefore, the Centre will provide ₹14,030 crore fund in FY24 to achieve the milestone in the sanitation scheme, the minister said.
More than 40% of Indian villages have declared themselves as ODF plus.
ODF plus village is defined as a village which sustains its ODF status, ensures solid and liquid waste management and is visually clean.
While talking about Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM), the minister said that the government is in line to achieve it by 2024 and informed that in Q4 of the current financial year ending today witnessed installation of 86,894 connections each second on an average.
To accelerate the efforts to achieve universal sanitation coverage and to put the focus on sanitation, the Prime Minister Modi had launched the Swachh Bharat Mission in 2014. Under the mission, all villages, Gram Panchayats (GPs), districts, states and union territories in the country declare themselves open defecation free. The mission also makes an initiative of setting up an accountable mechanism of monitoring latrine use.
Jal Jeevan Mission, on the other hand, is envisioned to provide safe and adequate drinking water through individual household tap connections by 2024 to all households in rural India.
The minister also announced that the National Scheme Sanctioning Committee (NSSC) which met on March 28, 2023, for consideration of the Annual Implementation Plans (AIPs) of all the States and Union Territories has approved the State/UT budgets to the tune of Rs. 52,049 crores for SBM-G Phase II activities through convergence for the Financial Year 2023-24.
