Delhi High Court’s Landmark Judgment on Supply of Drinking Water in Indian Railways

This PIL was dodgily contested by Railway Board for more than nine years. For five years, it refused to even acknowledge that its water quality standards needed to be scrapped to adopt the national code

Alok Kumar Verma, Retd. IRSE

Unquestionably, the majority of Indians have found that the #drinking water they receive from the piped water supplies in the towns and cities is not always suitable for #human consumption.

In this regard, the #IndianRailways has perhaps been the worst defaulter. Its #water supplies at the Railway #stations and #colonies cover the entire nation, and historical records indicate that the incidence of the supply of #contaminated water has been very high for at least the last three decades.

A report by the Passenger Amenities Committee (#PAC) of #RailwayBoard in 1994 and a report by the #CAG of India Report Number 11 of 2013 (#Railways) on “Cleanliness and Sanitation on Indian Railways” both highlight this in the records that are readily available.

Drinking water supply on the #NorthernRailway was one of my duties when I was posted as Chief Engineer, Headquarter on the Northern Railway in 2011. I quickly discovered from my inspections the breadth and scope of the issues afflicting the Northern Railway’s #water supplies throughout the entire chain, from problems with the water’s sourcing to monitoring and surveillance of its chemical and microbial quality.

The #fundamental issue was with the seriously flawed water quality standards that #IndianRailways had created and included in the Indian Railway Medical Manual (#IRMM). This flawed standard essentially allowed the supply of contaminated water because it did not call for follow-up testing for the presence of E. Coli as soon as Total #Coliform Bacteria was discovered in the water supply in periodic tests, which are carried out once a month at all major supplies and once every two months at minor supplies.

There were numerous other serious problems. The #storage and #distribution pipelines had flaws that caused #contamination, and the water treatment #infrastructure had essentially collapsed.

Three-fourths of the total installations’ water treatment plants were found to be inoperable, and the remaining one-fourth were in subpar shape. In essence, this meant that the #drinking_water supplied by the #Railway was not being disinfected, which is a requirement that must be met.

In the #Delhi-NCR-region, particularly in the railway stations and colonies at #NewDelhi, #OldDelhi, Hazrat #Nizamuddin, and #Ghaziabad, the state of the storage tanks was very poor. Nearly every #station on the Northern Railway experienced varying degrees of supply issues outside of Delhi NCR. There was hardly a station or colony where the supply of contaminated water was not common. This can be inferred from the fact that every sample examined between July and December 2013 in #Lucknow Division revealed that the water was contaminated. The results of the other #divisions were no less alarming.

The other worrying problem was that Northern Railway was purchasing #chlorination plants for the disinfection of water that were of poor quality, failed to perform chlorination properly, and were often out of order. It was discovered that there was extensive tailoring of the #technical specifications in the tenders for the purchase of chlorination plants, with the end result being that a small number of companies dominated the supply of chlorination plants. In most cases, these suppliers also operated and maintained the plants and supplied the disinfectant chemical used for chlorination.

In May 2013, #RailwayBoard issued instructions to all the #railways to procure a chlorination #plant that goes by the name “Programmable Logic Controller Based Automatic Bacteriological Treatment Plants.” The problem was that the #plants by this name were manufactured and supplied by only one company, which appeared to have coined this rather misleading name for his brand of plants.

For many years, Northern Railway used technical #specifications that were exactly the same as the specifications provided in this supplier’s pamphlet to purchase these plants. On January 9, 2014, I wrote to the Railway Board, asking that it revoke the aforementioned order. I also met with then Member Engineering (#ME) to discuss this.

Since the problems were so basic and pervasive, I raised the issues afflicting water supply in the Works Standard Committee on Indian Railways, of which I was a member. The committee recommended that I be made part of the committee that was preparing the new “#Works_Manual” for Indian Railways.

By the end of 2013, more and more #evidence of irregularities and malpractices in the water treatment system had emerged. One day (February 14, 2014), I received a legal notice from one of the chlorination #contractors who alleged that I had defamed that company by initiating an inquiry into the working of the plants supplied by it.

I found myself transferred to the Northeast Frontier Railway (#NFR) and improperly relieved of charge on March 26, 2014. On March 26, 2014, a PIL filed on behalf of the Center for Public Interest Litigation (#CPIL) regarding the railways continuing failure to supply #safe drinking water.

This Public Interest Litigation (#PIL) was dodgily contested by #RailwayBoard for more than nine years. For five years, it refused to even #acknowledge that its #water quality standards needed to be scrapped to adopt the national code, #BIS Code No. 10500/2012. Its progress in improving the chlorination and removing the other defects was too slow, particularly the installation of new chlorination plants that met the performance specifications. Furthermore, there were important gaps in its monitoring of microbial quality. Furthermore, it didn’t test for all the harmful chemicals and tested chemical quality only once at the time of the installation of the water source.

After much deliberation, the #RailwayBoard finally agreed on August 11, 2023, to implement the final recommendation regarding swiftly testing for specific pathogens if the issue of microbial contamination (the presence of #EColi) persists. The Railway Board has also confirmed that it will soon finish implementing all of the recommendations made in the petitioner’s CPIL to ensure a water supply that fully complies with BIS 10500 of 2012. The Delhi High Court has since issued an appropriate order closing the PIL with this assurance.

Why is this ruling a #landmark one? There are two main reasons:

● In India, there is hardly any water supply where the national standard, BIS 10500 of 2012, is fully followed in respect of both the #microbial quality and the #chemical quality.

● Similarly, there is a possibility, no water supply in the country, which has a comprehensive water quality monitoring system to the last stage of testing for specific pathogens.

According to my extensive research, neither the Government of India nor any state governments have even released a comprehensive water monitoring protocol. The ones that are already in place frequently have gaps and are unclear. In fact, this is the main reason it took so long to get the #recalcitrant Railway Board to accept the monitoring #protocol, which I had developed in 2012-14 while working for Northern Railway before being abruptly transferred. To make all necessary changes on the ground, the #RailwayBoard and the #ZonalRailways will have to put in a lot of work.
Thanks to this #PIL and the #DelhiHighCourt’s ruling, there is finally hope for the supply of safe drinking water by Indian Railway.