Ten states — Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Chhattisgarh, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Karnataka, Kerala, Meghalaya, Orissa and Uttar Pradesh — had failed to a assign a premier institute with the task of checking water quality. Six districts in Arunachal Pradesh, which claimed to have conducted water-quality tests, had no qualified staff.
Assam neither had any new laboratory for testing water quality nor were the facilities in the existing ones updated. In Bihar, two out of nine districts did not have a laboratory. In Chhattisgarh, no funds were used to improve the infrastructure in labs. The lab in Raipur was used as a guest house.
The ARWS guidelines stipulate testing of all water sources at least once a year.
However, in 17 states — Arunachal, Assam, Bihar, Gujarat, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, Jammu and Kashmir, Jharkhand, Karnataka, Maharashtra, Meghalaya, Nagaland, Orissa, Punjab, Rajasthan, Sikkim and Uttarakhand — no tests were conducted.
In Himachal Pradesh, against the requirement of 941 tests to be conducted during 2002-07, only 91 samples were checked. In Haryana, against a target of 94,000 samples during 2002-07, only 13,980 were checked out of which 1,598 samples were found to be unfit for consumption.