The government intends to promulgate an ordinance to fix standards for drinking water and would make public on Thursday the test results of 12 soft drink brands to set aside any controversy.
Earlier in the months Delhi-based non-governmental organisation Centre for Science and Environment said cold drinks sold in and around Delhi contained a deadly cocktail of pesticide residues.
The government was also planning to include water in the definition of 'food' through an ordinance to fix standards for it, Health Minister Sushma Swaraj told reporters in New Delhi.
Reacting to allegations that the cold drink report was not accessible, Swaraj said "There is nothing hidden on the issue. We will make the report public tomorrow."
She said the government had "nothing to do" with the testing by the two laboratories, Central Food and Technology Research Institute, Mysore, and Central Food Laboratory, Kolkata.
CFTRI was the only accredited laboratory in the country, which had international recognition.
The labs had lifted the cold drink samples from the market and these were manufactured in the same bottling plants as those tested by the .
While all the 12 brands tested contained pesticides, in three of them it was below the European Union norms while for nine it was above the prescribed norm, she said.
Swaraj said though there were norms for food, water did not have any set standard in the country, as water was not included under the food category.
"Thus, we have decided to include water in the definition of food. It needs to be done through a legislation, but we do not want to wait and want to carry out the changes through an ordinance," she said adding once it was done a group of experts would decide what these norms should be in terms of all aspects including pesticide."
