Unsafe Water Continues To Pose A Threat

Operation Paani crisscrosses Capital, Gurugram & Noida with scientists, tests samples on WHO parameters

- Isha Gupta and Sushant Mehra

From frantic scrambles at the back of tankers to brief windows of piped supplies — that’s how Delhi gets its drinking water.

But the residents of the world’s second most populous city don’t really know how safe and clean their supplies are. While the Arvind Kejriwal government says the water is fit for drinking, the Centre disagrees.

As the dispute over Delhi’s water quality raged, India Today TV set out on a mission with a team of independent experts to test the elixir of life across the city and its neighbourhoods — the first of its kind by any media house in the country.

The team crisscrossed Delhi’s all seven Lok Sabha constituencies plus Noida and Gurugram on the suburbs.

For three days, starting December 9, they knocked on unfamiliar doors to sample drinking water in order to test it on all WHO-prescribed parameters in a world-class laboratory.

LABORATORY FINDINGS

The three-day mission revealed that five out of nine areas passed the water-quality test and four failed it.

Laboratory reports from East, West, North-East Delhi and Gurugram rated the supplies unfit for drinking primarily because of bacterial contamination.

The test reports of Mayur Vihar, Dwarka, Burari and Gurugram read “with respect to bacteriological tests, water does not conform to IS: 10500-2012, and cannot be considered fit for drinking purpose.”