Quality of packaged water under FSSAI scrutiny

Waking up to a spate of complaints from various quarters about quality of packaged water, Union Health Ministry has asked the Food Safety and Standards Authority of India (FSSAI) to probe the matter and submit a report within a month.
In his order, Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad has suggested the FSSAI to pick random samples from the bottled water being sold in the market as well as look into the procedure being adopted by the water bottling plants.
He has also asked if the water units are following the specifications laid by the Indian Standards as formulated by the BIS. The move follows concerns that the water being sold in the bottles is not up to the mark and could result into various waterborne diseases.
However, in the wake of Azad's order while the FSSAI is likely to ask the State Food Departments to collect the samples, it is a known fact that many small water manufacturing units across the country are either misusing the ISI mark or using the fake mark to cash in on the rising demand for the bottled water from health conscious consumers, including foreigners.
For instance, in a recent raid in Chennai, the CBI and BIS sleuths found that a majority of the 300-odd packaged drinking water plants from where samples were taken up for analysis did not have a laboratory or microbiologist, mandatory for assessing and certifying the quality of the water.
In fact, a large number of packaged drinking water units are operating across the country without a licence or a BIS standard mark, as the same is not mandatory under the laws.
Moreover, the BIS, which is a national body for certification of standards, and the food departments in the States keep shifting the liability on each other.
While the BIS has been arguing that it could not haul up offenders because the certification was not a legal requirement, the State Food Departments stand is that unless the product displayed a label stating "packaged drinking water" and was sold with a sealed cap, no action could be taken under the related Rules.
The sources said that going by the number of existing licences, the total size of the bottled water market is above Rs2,500 crore.