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Not AvailableSustainable and safe use of groundwater requires periodicalmonitoring of its quality. Because of the presence of multiple contaminants, spatial variation of overall groundwater quality is difficult to describe. The present study describes the overall groundwater quality for irrigation using a multicriteria quality assessment system and sustainability of water use by incorporating the aspect of temporal variation of groundwater quality. The GIS-based multi-criteria system effectively amalgamated different quality parameters into an easily understandable format and assessed the spatial variation of groundwater quality for irrigation in west Delhi, India. The rate of spatial increment of poor quality groundwater within the study period was 3.7 km2 per year. It has been observed that there is deterioration of groundwater quality from southwest to east, along the general groundwater flow direction, and improvement of groundwater quality from west to northeast, due to less urbanization and availability of groundwater recharge zones with good quality water. Temporal variation of groundwater quality is high (V>20 %) at northern part, moderate (V=10–20 %) at middle and southern parts, and less (V