Overview
- Residents in Kunwar Singh Colony, Namdhari Colony, and Mayur Vihar report months of foul-smelling, discoloured water that often looks like sewage and is unfit even for bathing.
- Locals and a medical vendor describe frequent cases of vomiting, diarrhoea, and stomach illnesses that they link to the supplied water, with families resorting to bottled water and home filters.
- Delhi Jal Board documents acknowledge contamination and flag pipelines for urgent repair, while December testing found 100 unsatisfactory samples out of 7,129, including some at reservoirs and pumping stations.
- State water minister Parvesh Verma and DJB chief Kaushal Raj Sharma ordered audits, inspections of lines near sewers, increased sampling, added field crews and cleaning vehicles, two-day complaint turnarounds, and daily reporting with enforcement warnings.
- Oversight gaps persist as only a small share of labs are NABL-accredited and 300–400 daily tests fall short of the roughly 1,000 expected, against a backdrop of aging pipelines and CGWB findings of uranium above limits in 13–15% of groundwater samples.