Congress President and UPA chairperson Sonia Gandhi laid the foundation stone for a Rs 2,938-crore drinking water supply project at Jayal in Nagaur district of Rajasthan on Thursday. This drinking water project would benefit more than 23 lakh people from nine towns and about 900 villages of Nagaur district. 'The people of Nagaur always face acute shortage of drinking water. I am confident that this project will help a long way in reducing this problem. The people of Rajasthan also face a lot of hardship due to insufficient rains. Further there are issues of hard-water in the area. I am also aware that scarcity of water affects my sisters more than anyone else and they are forced to travel miles to fetch water. They spend half of their life time doing this. I also know that there was a time when people were reluctant to marry from those places in this state where there is scarcity of drinking water. But today, the situation has changed positively and there will be more improvements in the future' said Sonia Gandhi..