new delhi in view of contradictory reports of bureau of indian standards and delhi jal board on quality of drinking water in the capital the supreme court on friday directed the central pollution control board cpcb to undertake fresh laboratory testing of piped water supplied to residencesin its recent report bis said water quality of many cities was found to be below par with delhis water being the worst among 21 big cities the study was conducted on the directions of the ministry of consumer affairs food public distribution to check quality of piped drinking water being supplied in the country in keeping with the objectives of jal jeevan mission the centre and delhi government had traded allegations soon after the report was made publicstanding by the bis report its counsel vipin nair told a bench of justices arun mishra and deepak gupta that the testing of water samples were done by two reputed accredited laboratories in delhi and mumbai and their findings cannot be questionedbut the bis findings were dismissed by the delhi government and delhi jal board which contended that water samples from eight out of nine places picked up by bis had been found to be fit for drinking during a second analysis they also conducted a separate study by a committee which included specialists from national environmental engineering research institute which said the water quality was goodfacing dilemma on whose report should be relied upon the bench said water samples have to be retested again by another agency and entrusted the task to cpcb it directed the board to collect random samples of water from different locations and analyse them it asked the board to also involve officials from bis and djb in the task and file report before the court within 15 days it said the contamination of drinking water may be because of leaking pipes and asked the authorities to suggest measures to deal with the problem