Centre-Delhi govt trade charges over water row

November 21, 2019 00:22

Amid a raging controversy over the quality of drinking water in the national capital, chief minister Arvind Kejriwal accused Union minister Ram Vilas Paswan on Wednesday of spreading lies and misleading people on the issue by citing media reports that suggested irregularities in the process of water sample collection in Delhi.

Kejriwal's comments came days after Paswan released a Bureau of Indian Standards (BIS) report that said all water samples collected from the city failed a quality test.

Wading into the war of words between the Centre and the Delhi government over the issue, Union Health Minister Harsh Vardhan alleged that Kejriwal had been keeping his "eyes closed like Dhritarashtra (a character in the Mahabharata) and not trying to understand the pain of people".

Delhi BJP chief Manoj Tiwari shot off a letter to Kejriwal, claiming that people were "deeply scared" and "terrified" of drinking the "poisonous" water being supplied in the city.

Leading the counter attack, Kejriwal retweeted a television news clip, in which a person, whose address featured in the list of places from where the BIS collected the water samples, could be seen telling the media that there was no issue with the quality of drinking water and no sample was taken from his house.

The chief minister tweeted: "Sir (Paswan), you said a sample had been collected from this person's house and it failed (quality analysis), but this man says no specimen was taken from his residence. He is also saying he is satisfied with the water quality. Why did you lie... Why did you commit such a big fraud with people?"

Meanwhile, Aam Aadmi Party MLA from Burari Sanjeev Jha alleged that the BIS collected a sample from the house of one Puja Sharma, whose husband Manoj Sharma is the vice-president of Paswan's Lok Janshakti Party.

Reacting to it, Kejriwal said he was saddened to see such "misuse of power to spread fear among the residents of Delhi".

"You have taken a water sample from your own party official's house and spread fear among the residents of Delhi. Such an act does not suit a Union minister," the AAP supremo said in a tweet in Hindi.

A statement form the Delhi government said, "Various media reports showed that the first complainant, as per the Centre's report, neither complained about water quality nor the BIS collected a sample from his house."

Countering Kejriwal's allegation that the BIS report was "false and politically motivated", Vardhan said such reputed agencies did not look at the political affiliation of people while collecting samples. -- PTI

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