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Street food: 'How clean is water in pani puri,' Bombay HC asks BMC

Is ‘pani’ in pani puri you have on the roads of the city sourced from wells which do not supply potable water?

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Are Mumbaikars eating street food prepared using non-potable water? Is the ‘pani’ in the pani puri you have on the roads of Mumbai sourced from wells which do not supply potable water? – these are questions which the Bombay High Court has posed to the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC).

Terming it a very serious issue, a division bench of Chief Justice Manjulla Chellur and Justice GS Kulkarni on Friday asked the civic body to file an additional affidavit explaining its stand on whether water tankers which mostly provide water to street vendors in south Mumbai area, draw the water from wells, and if there was any regulation on their supply.

The bench asked the question after going through the affidavit filed by an officer of the Insecticide Branch of the Public Health Department of the BMC, Rajan Naringekar, who said that to avoid mosquito breeding in the wells across the city, the civic body stocks guppy fishes in them. Water is only allowed to be drawn from wells for non-potable purposes like cleaning and gardening, and only to those who have proper permissions, the affidavit stated.

However, the bench said that tankers mostly draw water from these wells and that they are the primary source of water supply to the street vendors. It asked whether the tanker owners carry out any filtration before supplying the water. While posting the matter for further hearing on May 29, the court asked the civic body to file an additional affidavit.

The direction was given while hearing a Public Interest Litigation filed by Milind Yavatkar who states that there is no control by authorities on the wells in the city as well as other parts of Maharashtra. The water tankers draw water from these wells and are illegally supplying water to hotels, hospitals and private institutions, thus causing huge losses to the exchequer, the petitioner claims. The petitioner has sought directions from the court to the authorities to take over the wells and stop the sale of water.

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