Delhi Jal Board to collect 3,000 samples of water to check quality

After 11 samples collected from Delhi failed on 19 parameters of quality, Delhi Jal Board is planning to collect over 3,000 samples of water from different areas in the national capital to ascertain whether the water is clean or dirty.

"11 samples are not enough to decide whether the water is clean or dirty in Delhi. We will now collect over 3,000 samples and will pick at least 5 samples from each ward for laboratory tests and results will be put out in public domain," Vice-Chairman of the Delhi Jal Board, Dinesh Mohaniya told ANI on Tuesday.

More than 2 crore people live in Delhi, therefore, 11 samples are just not enough," Mohaniya said.

Earlier on November 16, Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan had said that while Mumbai's water quality was at the top, the samples from Delhi had failed on 19 parameters.

"Mumbai tops ranking released by the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) for quality of tap water. Delhi is at the bottom, with 11 out of 11 samples failing on 19 parameters," Paswan said while addressing a press conference in New Delhi on Saturday.

"We were getting complaints regarding water from all over the country. We asked for some samples of water from Delhi. The tap water from Delhi did not meet the Indian Standards. Later, we asked for water samples from all state headquarters," he said.

The study was conducted as per directions of the Ministry of Consumer Affairs Food & PD to check the quality of piped drinking water being supplied in the country in keeping with the objectives of the Jal Jeevan Mission.

In the first phase, samples of drinking water were drawn from various locations across Delhi and in the second phase samples were drawn from 20 other state capitals, and sent for testing as per Indian Standards.