Puri becomes India’s first city to have ‘drink-from tap’ water facility

Bhubaneswar: Catapulting Odisha’s pilgrim city Puri to its own unique league in the entire country, Odisha chief minister Naveen Patnaik on Monday dedicated Sujal-Drink from Tap Mission’, which aims at delivering high-standard potable water to the users.

This initiative will benefit more than 2.5 lakh residents of the city and millions of people who visit the place every year to offer prayer to Lord Jagannath.

The Odisha government had launched the ‘Sujal-Drink from Tap Mission’ to provide quality potable water fit for direct consumption from the pipe in October 2020.

“The land of Lord Jagannath is always ahead of other cities. Today, Puri has joined the league of big cities in the world to provide safe drinking water to its residents. I thank the urban housing development department for executing the project in less than 10 months,” said the CM Patnaik.

According to the CM, nearly two crore tourists visit Puri every year. Now, the tourists will no longer have to carry water bottles with them while in Puri, he said.

“The move will now eliminate the usage of three crore plastic water bottles. This would mean the city will now be free from nearly 400 mt tonnes of plastic waste. The project is one of the best under the 5T initiative (5T stands for Teamwork, Transparency, Technology, Time and Transformation),” Patnaik added.