Railway has continued to supply contaminated water in PFs & Colonies

Delhi High Court concerned on quality of drinking water supplied in Railways

Rs.600 crore scam in supply of cantaminated water all over the Indian Railways

Despite this attempted scam to benefit one particular company in procurement contracts of about Rs. 600 crore over the Indian Railways, Railway Board took no action against the persons responsible for issue of the aforesaid instruction to Railways to provide these plants at all bore-wells

New Delhi : The Dehi High Court on Monday, 8th May, 2017 asked the railway authorities about the steps they have taken to improve the quality of drinking water at the Northern Railway stations and at their platforms. A bench of Acting Chief Justice Gita Mittal and Justice Anu Malhotra asked them to inform it about the implementation of the suggestions given by the petitioner in this regard. ‘Inform us about the steps you (Northern Railway) have taken for providing safe drinking water in the trains, at the platforms and related establishments,’ the bench said.

The High court Bench was hearing a plea filed by ‘Centre for Public Interest Litigation’ which has sought ‘an independent and preferably court-monitored probe into the neglect of the quality of the drinking water supply and the manipulations in the award of contracts for supply of chlorination plants for past several years.’ Advocates appearing for the NGO, submitted that suggestions were given, but that has not yet been implemented.

The bench sought the responses from the authorities concerned by next date of hearing, September 12. The NGO has contended that while the Indian Railways, which has an independent water supply system all over the country, is able to keep trains running by meeting the requirement of water for washing and cleaning of trains, tracks and platforms, it is ‘failing to supply safe and wholesome drinking water to millions of railway passengers and its staff who live in the railway colonies.’

It alleged that Indian Railways has ‘continued to neglect the quality of water supply for so many years’ as records which have come to light recently show that water quality has been very unsatisfactory for the past several years. The plea alleges ‘the water treatment infrastructure for disinfection of water by chlorination has almost completely collapsed and level of contamination in the entire supply network from the source to the top is alarming.’

The incidence of contamination in the water on Northern Railway is many times more than the permissible limit prescribed value of 5% in the national code (BIS Code No. 10500/1991). On one Division (Lucknow Division), 100% of the samples show contamination as per the data of 2013. There has been no improvement: The most recent data which pertains to October 2016 again shows contamination in 100% samples. Despite such high incidence of contamination all over the Railways, it continued supply of water without carrying out tests to establish that despite the contamination water is safe.

The following are the two root causes of the massive failure of the Railways to provide safe drinking water at its stations and colonies which has exposed millions of passengers and residents to the threat of water-borne diseases like typhoid, cholera, diarrhoea, dysentery, SAARS, hepatitis-A etc:

* The fundamentally flawed water quality standards, and testing and monitoring protocol

* Failure to provide chlorination plants of appropriate design and quality, and serious irregularities in their procurement

A. Flawed water quality standards and monitoring protocol:

The main flaw in the monitoring system of Railway is that it violated the following fundamental of water quality monitoring which are enshrined in the national code (BIS No. 10500):

“Water showing contamination (Presence of Total Coliform Bacteria) can be treated as safe only if repeat sampling and testing shows that faecal contamination (Presence of E-Coliform Bacteria has not taken place).”

If E-Coliform is found to be present, either ‘boil water advisory’ should be issued or supply should be arranged from an alternative source. Further tests should immediately be carried out to find out which specific pathogens are present in water: Based on this information, the remedial measures to destroy the pathogens should be applied.

Railway has continued to supply contaminated water (Presence of Total Coliform Bacteria) for past many years without verifying that the contaminated water does not contain E-Coliform.

Finally, Railway Board conceded the unitability of the claim that the national code is not relevant to Railway and in April 2016 it issued instructions to all the Railways vide letter No. 2004/LMB-II/9/1.Vol II dated 01.04.2016 to thenceforth follow the standards and water quality testing and monitoring protocols as per the national code and discontinue the existing practices as per the IRMM. But Railway has not yet implemented the national code.

B. Defective Chlorination Plants:

The latest position provided by the Respondent on order of the Hon’ble Court is that working chlorination plants exist at only 272 out of 541 installations (49.7%). A closer look reveals that at many important places like Delhi, Ghaziabad, Varanasi and Ambala, most of the water supply installations do not have working plants.

After the Chief Engineer sent his report dated 09.01.2014 to Railway Board, it withdrew its instruction of 07.03.2014 to all General Managers to provide ‘Programmable Logic Controller Based Automatic Bacteriological Plants’ at all bore-wells e Respondent’s counter-affidavit to the Petition.

However, despite this attempted scam to benefit one particular company in procurement contracts of about Rs. 600 crore over the Indian Railways, Railway Board took no action against the persons responsible for issue of the aforesaid instruction to Railways to provide these plants at all bore-wells.