NEW DELHI: With a CBI inquiry being ordered into the supply of substandard medicines in Delhi government hospitals, Delhi Health Minister Saurabh Bharadwaj on Friday said out of the "43 samples" collected from three hospitals, only five of them were declared "not of standard quality".

At a press conference here, he said in the official report, the terms "NSQ" or "not of standard quality" has been used many times, and in it, it is "nowhere mentioned that the drugs are fake, imitation, poison, spurious".

"You cannot write it officially like that as it wasn't so," he said.

The Union Home Ministry has ordered the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) inquiry into the alleged supply of substandard medicines in Delhi government hospitalsand whether the drugs were also distributed through mohalla clinics, sources said on Friday.

The CBI probe was ordered following a recommendation by Delhi Lt Governor V K Saxena on the matter in December last year.