Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation‘s joint municipal commissioner Ramesh Pawar was all set to deliver his budget speech on Wednesday when he decided to take a sip of water. Little did he know that one of the two bottles placed in front of him contained hand sanitiser, an omnipresent item in the present times of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The moment he took one sip from one of the bottles, he realised the mix-up and quickly spat out the sanitiser he had gulped. This set the staff around him astir and one of them quickly produced a bottle of drinking water. In the video tweeted by news agency ANI, Pawar can be seen grabbing the bottle before leaving his seat.

“I thought that I should drink water before starting my speech so I lifted the bottle and drank. Bottles of water and sanitiser kept there were similar. So it happened. As soon as I drank it, I realised the mistake and didn’t gulp it all the way down,” Ramesh Pawar was quoted by ANI as saying.

On Sunday, during the National Pulse Polio vaccination drive, 12 children were given sanitiser instead of oral polio vaccine in a village in Yavatmal district of Maharashtra. The children, all below 5 years of age, were admitted to a government hospital. Only one of the 12 kids complained of vomiting and uneasiness.