‘Meghalaya did not submit any report of contamination of drinking water’

NEW DELHI, Dec 1: The Ministry of Jal Shakti has clarified that the Centre has only informed the Lok Sabha that it has not received any report of contamination of drinking water from the Government of Meghalaya so far.
The same was done by Union Minister of State for Jal Shakti, Veeranna Somanna in a written reply to a question of VPP MP, Ricky Andrew J Syngkon in Lok Sabha recently.
“As on date, the State of Meghalaya has not reported any habitation with iron contaminants in drinking water sources beyond permissible limit,” the reply said.
Incidentally, Shillong and 44 other places reported high iron content even beyond the permissible limit by the state’s testing laboratories earlier. But the government has not reported to the Ministry any habitation with iron contaminants in drinking water sources beyond the permissible limit in the state.
The state government had even called for an emergency review meeting to address the issue as the water samples from localities showed presence of Coliform and E. coli organisms with low pH value.
The MoS also made it clear that under the Jeevan Mission (JJM) – Har Ghar Jal to make provision of potable water to every rural household of the country, through functional tap water connection i.e. at a service level of 55 litre per capita per day, of prescribed quality (BIS:10500), on regular and long-term basis.
Water being a state subject, planning, designing, implementation, approval and operation & maintenance is done by the concerned state with the central government providing technical and financial assistance.
Under JJM, while planning water supply schemes to provide tap water supply to households, priority is given to quality-affected habitations, the MoS said. While allocating the funds to states/ UTs in a particular financial year, 10% weightage is given to the population residing in habitations affected by chemical contaminants including iron affected habitations, he added.
Moreover, in water quality affected habitations where planning, implementation and commissioning of piped water supply schemes based on a safe water source takes time, purely as an interim measure, states/ UTs have been advised to install community water purification plants in such habitations, to provide potable water to every household at the rate of 8–10 litre per capita per day to meet their drinking and cooking requirements.
Under JJM, states/UTs can utilise up to 2% of their annual allocation of funds for water quality monitoring & surveillance activities for setting up and strengthening of water quality testing laboratories and other related issues.
The VPP MP wanted to know whether the government proposes to provide iron filters and installation of iron filtration systems to ensure access to potable water in the regions with high iron content in water particularly in Meghalaya. He also asked if the government is collaborating with state authorities in Meghalaya to conduct regular testing of water sources to monitor iron levels and if so, the plan to allocate dedicated funding for this purpose.
The MoS pointed out that since August 2019, Government of India in partnership with states is implementing JJM. In 2023-24, as reported by the state government on JJM-WAMIS portal, 51,836 water samples have been tested in water testing laboratories and 17,172 water samples tested using field testing kits (FTKs). Similarly, in 2024-25 (as on 25.11.2024), 27,610 samples in labs and 11,860 samples using FTKs have been tested so far.