NEW DELHI: The Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA) has begun the ground survey of Pey Jal Survekshan as of December 15 with a view to evaluating the quality and amount of water given to people, officials said on Wednesday.

On September 9, 2022, Minister of Housing and Urban Affairs Hardeep Singh Puri announced the launch of the Pey Jal Survekshan under the Atal Mission for Rejuvenation and Urban Transformation (AMRUT) 2.0, which will evaluate the service level compliance of the city with regard to the quality, quantity, and coverage of water supply, sewerage and septage management, extent of reuse and recycling of used water, and conservation of water bodies in 500 (485 after merger) AMRUT cities.

Officials said that  the poll would promote healthy rivalry between cities while acting as a monitoring tool and an accelerator for the AMRUT Mission. The Ministry has hired IPSOS, a non-governmental organisation, to carry out the poll.

With regard to the Pey Jal Survekshan toolkit and website, the Ministry has held capacity-building workshops for all of the participating Urban Local Bodies (ULBs). The main areas of attention include water utility services, used water utility services, bodies of water, Non-Revenue Water (NRW) estimation, best practises, and innovation.

The scope of household water tap and sewer connections, the quality and amount of water delivered to inhabitants, the availability of complaint redressal, and the condition of water bodies are only a few of the factors that will be recorded by Survekshan. Also, it will shed light on the financial viability of ULBs in terms of revenue production vs the cost of providing water and sewage services. The establishment of a citizen-driven accountability system will be made possible by the inclusion of the public perception survey.

The cities will be given ratings, and city-water report cards that show how each city's water is doing will be made public. Officials said, the survey's findings will show how secure the water supply is in ULBs and will aid in the achievement of SDG-6.

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