Jal Jeevan Mission 2.0 Regional Meet Ends in Tiruchirappalli

The first Regional Conference on Jal Jeevan Mission (JJM) 2.0 ended at Tiruchirappalli in Tamil Nadu on 14 November 2026, with the message that a village water supply is a service to be run and not merely a structure to be built. Ashok K. K. Meena, Secretary of the Department of Drinking Water and Sanitation in the Ministry of Jal Shakti, led the concluding session.

A day in the villages

On the second day, five teams led by senior officials, among them the Secretary and the Additional Secretary and Mission Director of the National Jal Jeevan Mission, went out to five villages. The Secretary's own round began at the historic Grand Anicut, also called Kallanai, on the Cauvery river, and went on to the riverbed collector wells and headworks at Vadugakudi. At Palamaneri village he joined the Jal Arpan Diwas celebration, the formal handing over of drinking water works to the Gram Panchayat, planted a sapling and spoke to members of the Village Water and Sanitation Committee. Women of the Sujalam Shakti Group showed how they test water quality with field test kits.

What Jal Arpan is meant to be

The Secretary said the handover should not be read as a ceremony but as the start of a lasting partnership between the state government, the implementing department and the Gram Panchayat. JJM 2.0, he said, looks past the household tap connection towards water that arrives regularly, reliably and safely, with the eventual aim of a 24x7 supply of potable water straight from the tap. He suggested that officials attending a Jal Arpan should drink from a village tap themselves to build public confidence in the quality. Kamal Kishore Soan, Additional Secretary and Mission Director of the National Jal Jeevan Mission, did exactly that during his village visit.

The reforms under JJM 2.0

Joint Secretary D. Senthil Pandian, summing up the two days, said action points, responsible agencies and timelines had been fixed after the Departmental Summit held in September 2026, followed by consultations with the Ministries of Panchayati Raj, Skill Development and Entrepreneurship, Tribal Affairs and Rural Development. The reforms he listed cover institutional accountability, the formal handover of works to Gram Panchayats, operation and maintenance policies, the training of Village Water and Sanitation Committees, dedicated District Technical Units, water quality monitoring, digital mapping through Sujalam Bharat and source sustainability planning using the Decision Support System.

What comes next

States were asked to keep to their reform timelines before a national review proposed for February 2027, for which five Regional Conferences are planned as a structured process. The Secretary urged states to use the Decision Support System for rainwater harvesting and groundwater recharge, and asked for continued training of elected Panchayat representatives in local languages and conditions. Director Hari Narayanan M. of the National Jal Jeevan Mission proposed the vote of thanks, with appreciation for the Government of Tamil Nadu.