Delhi govt to form 32 teams to collect 1,400 water samples; test results in one month

The Delhi government will set up 32 teams to collect water samples from each ward in the national capital, test them and put the results in public domain within a month, officials said on Tuesday.

This comes days after a Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) report stated that drinking water in the city failed quality test.

Each team will include four officials and 5 samples will be collected from each ward, Delhi Jal Board's Chief Water Analyst Sanjay Sharma said.

Total 1,400 water samples will be tested on 29 parameters, most important being turbidity, pH levels, calcium, magnisium, hardness etc, he said.

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal will also write to Union Minister Ram Vilas Paswan to nominate more people to these teams, Sharma said.

The Centre has already nominated two experts from the BIS for a joint inspection and testing of water samples from across the city.

On November 16, Paswan had released a BIS report according to which Delhi has the most unsafe water among 21 major Indian cities.

The report said that water samples from Delhi failed on 19 of the 28 parameters.

In the first phase of its survey, the BIS had found all the 11 samples drawn from Delhi did not comply with the quality norm and the piped water was not safe for drinking purpose.

Kejriwal had on Monday accused the central ministers of playing "dirty politicis" and scaring people by saying that the city's drinking water is poisonous. He said Delhi's water quality cannot be ascertained on the basis of just 11 samples.

The DJB on Monday said that between January 1 and September 24, it collected 1,55,302 samples. Of these, only 2,222 -- around 1.5 per cent -- failed.