Weeks after the Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) said that water in Delhi was the most unsafe among 21 State capitals in India, the Delhi Jal Board (DJB) on Wednesday said that 98.19% of the 4,204 samples the board collected from across the city were found to be fit for drinking.
In November, a study by BIS, based on 11 water samples collected from across the city, said that all the samples had failed the quality test. After the BIS study, the DJB collected five samples from each municipal ward of the city and tested it.
As per World Health Organisation (WHO) norms, allowable limit of unsatisfactory results is 5% in a large sample size and Delhi’s performance is comfortably within WHO norms, according to the DJB.
“DJB collected about 4,204 samples from Delhi out of which 4,128 samples were found to be satisfactory. 98.19% samples were found to be fit for drinking and the unsatisfactory samples were just 1.81%,” DJB Vice Chairman Dinesh Mohaniya said while addressing a press conference on Wednesday.
Mr. Mohaniya termed the BIS study a “conspiracy” not only to defame DJB, but also Delhi. “The BIS report was politically motivated. The report was published just ahead of Delhi election and the report was technically wrong and WHO SOP [Standard Operating Procedure] was not followed in testing," Mr. Mohaniya said.
The BIS study triggered a political blame game in the Capital with the AAP government rejecting the study and the BJP accusing the State government of supplying “poisonous” water.
‘Violated WHO norms’
“BIS data shows that it didn’t follow the SOP and even violated the norms of WHO to conclude that Delhi’s water is not potable by testing just 11 samples. BIS collected these samples in an unscientific way without transparency. It even made false claims on the said sample collection and announced in a hurry that water in Delhi is not good for drinking,” Mr. Mohaniya said.
He said that the report was a “mischievous effort” to malign the Delhi government just before the Assembly elections and serve the “commercial interests” of the RO manufacturers. “In an appeal to quash an NGT order in the Supreme Court, RO manufacturers quoted the BIS report,” he added.
