The committee set up to look into the revision of standards for bottled drinking water submitted its final report, on Tueasday, to Union Minister for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution Sharad Yadav.

The report said the Bureau of Indian Standards should overhaul its testing process.

Yadav said the new standards, based on the recommendations of the report and in the light of available international standards, would be put in place as soon as possible.

The minister said while the licences of over 20 companies have been cancelled, many samples were still being analysed. He added that certification could even be given to a private laboratory for testing water samples if required.

Pointing out the shortcomings of existing BIS standards, the report said they were derived from World Health Organisation and Codex norms. "At that time, Codex had not agreed with the test methods for pesticide residues and thus BIS test methods were adopted which were not meant for drinking water but were the only ones available," Satwant Reddy, consumer affairs additional secretary and the chairman of the committee, said.

Reddy added that a proactive approach should be followed to ensure that the standards for packaged and mineral drinking water are dynamic and at par with international standards.

There should be an in-built alert system in the standards to highlight problems before they assume dangerous proportions. A core group of scientists should be formed to keep track of recent standards and update them even before the review is due, the report observed. The existing procedures are clouded in secrecy, Reddy added.

The government should make them transparent by posting the list of licencees, standards, regulations and test reports of samples from factories or markets on the Internet.

Even the list of various expert committee members should be placed on the Net,so that everybody is 'more' responsible, she said.