Since October 2024, the Jal Jeevan Mission’s (JJM) ongoing projects have been running solely on State funds due to pending funds from the Centre, Maharashtra Minister for Water Supply and Sanitation, Gulabrao Patil informed the Legislative Assembly on Friday during the Winter Session in Nagpur.
NCP legislator Kashinath Date questioned why 25,000 projects out of 52,000 commissioned under the programme are still incomplete, leaving many villages deprived of piped water and water supply. He cited Jalgaon, Kolhapur, Nashik, Dhule, Pune, and Ahilyanagar districts, where bills of contractors are unpaid, work is pending due to lack of funds, new electricity connections are due, irregularities are common in the tender process, and quality of work has been shoddy.
In a written reply to Mr. Date’s query, Mr. Patil confirmed that the pace of work has been affected due to lack of funds. “To avoid any adverse impact on the work, the State government has disbursed ₹2483.58 crore during 2024-25 and ₹2103.25 crore during 2025-26,” he said.
“Of the 51,560 schemes commissioned under the JMM, 26,131 schemes have been completed, and the remaining 25,429 schemes are in progress,” he said.
Mr. Patil noted that in the case of Nashik, a new electricity connection is pending due to arrears of 11 schemes under the Zilla Parishad, whereas for Dhule, the 263 schemes are in progress out of the approved 520. Mr. Patil also agreed that the State government could collect public contributions of ₹22.09 crore only, whereas the required capital investment for water supply schemes in the State is ₹2,226 crore.
On the question of taking action against the defaulted contractors, Mr. Patil highlighted that 67 contractors were blacklisted and a fine of ₹12.801 crore has been recovered for negligence, while work orders of 188 contractors have been cancelled due to delay in delivery.
Show-cause notices have been served to 76 project management consultants and 17 third-party inspection authorities. Notices have been served to 70 junior engineers, 149 deputy engineers and 12 executive engineers, while seven engineers have been suspended, he said.
“On the irregularities, the seven officers have been suspended, and the services of one officer in the junior engineer cadre working from an external source have been terminated. 233 contractors who committed defaults in the project implemented by the Maharashtra Life Authority have been fined and recovered ₹55.84 crore,” Mr. Patil said.
Published – December 13, 2025 01:30 am IST
