NEW DELHI: The Centre has started work on an ambitious proposal to provide piped drinking water to soldiers at border outposts in all of India’s border-states. This massive project is to be executed in joint collaboration with the Union home ministry and the Ministry of Drinking Water and Sanitation (MDWS), with the former providing funds and the latter the technical expertise for the same, top government officials have told ET. Border states , which will implement the plan through their agencies, have been asked to furnish their plan and the funds needed for the exercise. “Arunachal Pradesh and Gujarat have sent their proposals. Just Arunachal Pradesh has put forward a budget of nearly `1,000 crore for this. A separate vertical could be devised to handle this big project with a dedicated outlay as the funds required will be huge,” a senior government official told ET.Senior MHA and MDWS officials have already held video-conference meetings with states over the past one week and have asked all border states to send in their proposals. “We are asking states to draw up plans that piped and treated drinking water is made available to the premises of the border outpost... the main pipeline reaching the nearest anganwadi or school and a connection being given to the outpost from there. High-level reviews of the project are being carried out,” a senior official said.The MDWS is implementing the National Rural Drinking Water Programme to ensure piped drinking water to every rural household in the country. Funds allotted for the same is only about `6,000 crore. “So the home ministry is expected to bear cost of the water to border outposts plan,” the senior official said.GROUND SITUATION Piped water supply is hard to come by in the border outposts. This caught attention of officials at the highest level in the government, top officials told ET. Jawans at border outposts are dependent on natural or local sources like springs, bore-wells or water tankers. Some forces have allowed local commandants to hire porters to carry drinking water from nearby sources to the outposts as carrying this is difficult in remote and inaccessible areas. BSF has put RO filtration units at some of its outposts which have generator facility to ensure that jawans get drinking water. But there is always the danger of contamination. “Safe drinking water is a basic necessity — even more so for soldiers at the border,” an official said.There are thousands of border outposts in the country manned by BSF, SSB and ITBP personnel in difficult terrains in J&K, Punjab, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Bengal and the north-eastern states.