CAG Audit: 89% of Indian Railway Stations Fail Basic Amenity Standards, E Coli Found in Drinking Water

India's Comptroller and Auditor General has audited 512 railway stations. Nearly 90% of them failed basic standards.

The CAG report, tabled in Parliament last week and titled "Passenger amenities and sanitation at non-suburban railway stations," found 458 of 512 stations deficient in what Indian Railways itself defines as Minimum Essential Amenities. Only 54 stations, about 11%, had zero shortfalls, according to the report as cited by The Hindu.

The specific failures are basic stuff. Fans missing at 42% of stations. Water coolers absent at 40%. Drinking water taps inadequate at 27%. Urinals short at 22%. Seating short at 15%. Platform shelters lacking at 13%. Latrines short at 12%. Clocks missing at 60 stations, dustbins missing at 149 stations, according to figures reported by The Hindu and The Wire.

The water problem is worse than inconvenience

The CAG found E coli bacteria, the kind linked to food poisoning, diarrhea and kidney failure, in water cooler samples at eight stations: Coimbatore and Palakkad Junctions in Southern Railway, Hyderabad in South Central Railway, four stations in Central Railway (Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, Bhiwandi Road, Kalyan and Lonavala), and Madhupur in Eastern Railway, according to the report as detailed by Times of India, Hindustan Times and Times Now.

Broader testing found total coliform bacteria, which includes E coli, in tap water samples at 49 stations across eight zones during 2022-23 and 56 stations across nine zones during 2023-24, per the CAG's findings.

Bacteriological testing of drinking water wasn't even conducted at 59 stations across six zones, Times of India reported.

Even India's flagship stations weren't exempt. CSMT in Mumbai, Howrah and Sealdah in Kolkata, New Delhi, and Mumbai Central, all top-tier NSG-1 stations pulling in over ₹500 crore in annual passenger revenue, were flagged for deficient seating, sanitary facilities, dustbins and electronic indicator boards, according to Hindustan Times.

Money wasn't the problem. Execution was.

The CAG found no shortage of funds. Between 36% and 44% of the budget grant for passenger amenities went unspent every single year from 2019-20 through 2023-24, according to Down To Earth and The Wire.

The CAG explicitly attributed this to "deficiencies in planning and execution rather than financial constraints." The money was sitting there. Nobody spent it properly.

A review of 395 passenger amenity projects across 325 non-Amrit Bharat stations found 59% were delayed, some by more than four years, with only 41% finished on schedule, per The Hindu's reporting.

This also isn't a new discovery. The CAG noted these same shortfalls showed up in prior audits from 2007, 2013 and 2016. Railway Board circulars from April 2018 set an August 31, 2018 deadline to have minimum amenities in place everywhere. Eight years later, nearly 90% of stations still fail that standard.

What Railways says it's doing now

After the report became public, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw held a review meeting with top officials, according to Times of India. Indian Railways announced a "Tank to Tap" water filtration system for rollout at 20,000 locations, plans to replace water tanks, regular testing at source and outlet points, centralized monitoring, and scheduled tank cleaning.

Those are the right fixes on paper. The actual question is whether they get executed, given that the CAG just documented a five-year pattern of announced plans not translating into finished work.

A separate but related mess in London

Unrelated to India, but worth noting as a contrast in how water utility failures get handled: in east London, Thames Water has spent five days repairing burst water mains that cut supply to roughly 10,000 homes across postcodes including E4, E10, E17 and IG6-IG10, according to the BBC. Residents on the company's priority services register told the BBC they still weren't getting promised support. Thames Water raised bills 40% in April 2025 and was fined a record £122.7 million by regulator Ofwat last year, mostly for sewage spill violations. It also paid its finance chief a £1 million signing bonus in July, per the BBC. Different country, different system, same theme: infrastructure failures paired with money going somewhere other than fixes.

Back in India, the open question is enforcement. The CAG has now flagged these same amenity gaps in four audits spanning nearly two decades. Parliament has the report. Vaishnaw has announced a fix. Whether the next CAG audit, whenever it comes, shows 90% of stations still failing basic standards will tell taxpayers whether this cycle finally broke.