Kejriwal challenges water report, red flags sample size
CM says only 1.43% of the 155,000 samples tested by DJB failed, indicating good quality
This is politics of water. How could Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan rely on water collected from merely 11 sources to conclude that water supplied in a city as big as Delhi is fit or unfit for consumption?
ARVIND KEJRIWAL, CM
NEW DELHI: Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal Monday challenged the findings of the recently published Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) report that said drinking water in Delhi had failed quality tests. He countered the BIS report with Delhi Jal Board’s water test results, according to which only 1.43% of the 1.55 lakh samples collected over a period of nine months were found unsatisfactory.
Kejriwal dismissed the study as politics of water”. He said “very soon”the government will collect water samples from five sources at random from each of Delhi’s 250 municipal wards in the presence of opposition parties and the media and get those tested to prove that Delhi’s piped water is good to use.
“This is a politics of water. How could Union consumer affairs minister Ram Vilas Paswan rely on water collected from merely 11 sources in Delhi to conclude that water supplied in a city as big as Delhi is fit or unfit for consumption? We demand that he disclose which 11 sources he collected the water from.”
The CM said the government did not get any answer when it asked for the details of places in Delhi from where the 11 samples were collected. “Was there anything to be hidden? As per the WHO (World Health Organisation) standards, one sample each should be collected for every 10,000 people in a city. About 2,000 samples should have been collected from Delhi,” he said.
Paswan, on November 16, had released the second phase of the BIS study that stated that Delhi along with Kolkata and Chennai failed in almost 10 of 11 quality parameters of drinking water.
In his criticism of the BIS study, Kejriwal cited a news report quoting Union Jal Shakti minister Gajendra Singh Shekhawat who in September said the quality of piped water in Delhi surpassed European standards. However, days after that comment, the Delhi unit of BJP had alleged the Delhi government was misleading Shekhawat with data that exaggerated on quality of piped water.
On Monday, Kejriwal said, “The Delhi Jal Board collects 500 water samples from Delhi every day. We will increase that to 2,000 samples to prove that the water we supply is fit enough.”
“If that is not enough, very soon, we will collect five samples at random from each municipal ward in Delhi in front of opposition parties and the media. We will get the water tested to prove that piped supply in Delhi is fit for consumption,” Kejriwal said.
Sharing figures, Kejriwal said DJB had tested around 1.55 lakh water samples collected from across the city between January and September this year, of which only 1.43% failed the scrutiny. In October, he said the agency tested 16,502 water samples, of which 658 failed the test.
Accusing Kejriwal of doing politics, Paswan said in the Lok Sabha, “I challenge you (Kejriwal) that you name your officials for a team that will have top BIS officials. Let them go to any area, pick samples and get them tested from any lab. I challenge Kejriwal to name his officials by today evening, or tomorrow or day after...,” he said.