Delhi water row: DJB begins drive to collect water samples

New Delhi: The Delhi Jal Board on Saturday began a drive to collect water samples from across the national capital for testing, in a bid to counter a BIS report that said the city's water was unfit for drinking.

"A total of 3,000 samples, five from each ward, will be collected and tested as per the established norms and standard operating procedures," Delhi Jal Board vice chairman Dinesh Mohaniya had said on Friday. "The drive will counter the false propaganda being spread through a fake survey," he had said.

The Centre and the Delhi government have been trading allegations since Union Consumer Affairs Minister Ram Vilas Paswan released a Bureau of India Standards (BIS) report on November 16 which said water samples collected from 11 places in the city failed quality tests on 19 parameters.

According to the Delhi government, the samples from eight out of nine places in the city that figured in the BIS report were found fit for drinking in a second analysis. It has also alleged that the BIS report was "fabricated" to benefit manufacturers of reverse osmosis (RO) purifiers.