CAG audit reveals implementation failures in Green India Mission and railway station amenities
Recent reports by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India have flagged failures in two very different areas of public policy, expanding India's green cover and providing basic passenger amenities at railway stations. One found that the Green India Mission increased forest cover by only about 0.03 million hectares against a target of 1.4 million hectares between 2015-16 and 2024-25, a shortfall of 97.57 per cent.
The other found E. coli and other coliform bacteria in drinking-water samples at several railway stations and deficiencies in minimum passenger amenities at more than 89 per cent of the stations it examined. The subjects are different, but the audits point to a similar problem: government guidelines and targets do not necessarily translate into outcomes on the ground.
Green India Mission
The National Mission for a Green India (GIM), launched in 2014, is one of the eight Missions outlined under the National Action Plan on Climate Change. It aims to protect, restore and enhance India's forest cover and tackle climate change by undertaking plantation activities in forest and non-forest areas in selected degraded, vulnerable landscapes.
The CAG's Performance Audit Report No. 4 of 2026 examined GIM interventions in 16 states and Union territories for which the Environment Ministry had approved physical and financial targets over the 10 years.
The headline shortfall.
Between 2015-16 and 2024-25, the mission achieved an increase of only 0.03409 million hectares in forest cover against a target of 1.4 million hectares, a shortfall of 97.57 per cent, according to the audit. It also fell short of its target for improving forest-cover quality, against 1.4 million hectares; improvement was observed in only 0.11384 million hectares, a shortfall of 91.87 per cent.
Funding never arrived at scale.
The lack of convergence led to non-attainment of Rs. 10,600 crore in proposed funding support, the CAG said. Against an outlay of Rs. 2,000 crore approved by the Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs from the 12th Plan for the initial four years of the scheme, along with Rs. 400 crore from 13th Finance Commission grants towards the states' share, only Rs. 1,149.14 crore, 47.88 per cent, was received through budgetary support during the 10 years of implementation (2015-16 to 2024-25).
Planning failures compounded the funding gap.
Only six out of 68 sampled Annual Plans of Operation (APOs) were received by the Ministry before the start of the financial year, and none were approved on time. Internal controls were weak, eight states/UTs did not maintain annual accounts, and where accounts were prepared, they often remained unaudited or showed discrepancies against subsidiary records.
Lack of convergence.
GIM was designed to work alongside existing programmes rather than operate as an isolated afforestation scheme. Its implementation was expected to converge with programmes such as CAMPA, MGNREGS and other central and state afforestation initiatives. Instead, the CAG found convergence was absent across institutional levels, with schemes like Nagar Van Yojana and School Nursery Yojana operating in silos and collative Annual Plans of Operation not being received.
The CAG also found the envisaged bottom-up approach was not adhered to in both area identification and physical target assignment. Despite vulnerability being a key criterion, landscapes with low to moderate priority were selected over those more vulnerable to climate change.
Weak monitoring. Fourteen states failed to provide the required public web links for transparency. Audit evaluations revealed inflated data and overstated achievements associated with non-validated KML files, and GIS analysis showed that 70 per cent of sampled sites had no noticeable changes attributable to the mission. A government programme can report the number of hectares treated or plantations undertaken — but if the underlying geographic data cannot be validated, or if an independent GIS assessment cannot detect a noticeable change at sampled sites, the reliability of those reported achievements becomes a separate concern.
Carbon-sequestration assessment went nowhere. Except Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, no state conducted any assessment of carbon sequestration during 2015-2025. Even there, improper planning by ICFRE over the maintenance of flux towers installed in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh led to idling of the infrastructure built for quantifying carbon sequestration, despite expenditure of Rs. 3.50 crore.
The government has committed to creating an additional carbon sink of 2.5 to 3 billion tonnes of CO2 equivalent through additional forest and tree cover by 2030.
An independent analysis by PRS found that GIM has consistently under-utilised funds since 2020-21: for 2025-26, the revised estimates indicated utilisation of only 28 per cent of the allocation, and the mission received an allocation of Rs 170 crore for 2026-27.
Railways: When basic amenities fail basic tests
The second CAG audit examined passenger amenities and sanitation at 512 non-suburban railway stations across railway zones. The findings were striking for a service used by millions: Indian Railways operates over 7,424 non-suburban passenger trains daily and carried 292.4 crore non-suburban passengers in 2023-24, across 5,908 Non-Suburban Group (NSG) stations.
E. coli in drinking water. Water samples collected from water coolers at several stations tested positive for E. coli. The stations identified included Coimbatore and Palakkad Junction in Southern Railway; Hyderabad in South Central Railway; Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, Bhiwandi Road, Kalyan and Lonavala in Central Railway; and Madhupur in Eastern Railway. The audit also found total coliform bacteria, including E. coli, in samples taken from platform taps at 49 stations across eight zones in 2022-23 and 56 stations across nine zones in 2023-24. Some strains of E. coli can lead to food poisoning, diarrhoea and kidney failure, a general health fact, not a finding specific to the stations audited.
The problem was not an absence of rules. The Railway Board had stipulated that drinking-water quality should comply with its Uniform Drinking Water Quality Protocol and that bacteriological analysis should be conducted regularly. Yet the CAG found bacteriological analysis of drinking water had not been carried out at 59 stations across six zones, and E. coli-positive water samples at eight stations. There was a gap between the rules and their implementation.
More than 89 per cent of sampled stations lacked minimum amenities. Of the 512 stations examined, 458, more than 89 per cent, were deficient in Minimum Essential Amenities (MEAs), which include drinking water, waiting halls, seating arrangements, platform shelters, urinals, latrines, high-level platforms, fans, Foot Over Bridges, dustbins, clocks and public address systems. The Railway Board had instructed in April 2018 that MEAs should be ensured at all stations by August 31, 2018, yet the audit found substantial gaps years after that deadline.
The report, after analysing the Passenger Amenities Management System, found a shortfall of latrines at 201 stations, urinals at 403 stations and drinking-water taps at 2,035 stations, among other deficiencies. Even NSG-1 stations, Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, Howrah, Sealdah, New Delhi and Mumbai Central, were found deficient in seating arrangements, sanitary facilities, dustbins and electronic train indicator boards.
Among its major recommendations, the CAG urged the Railways to "ensure compliance with prescribed protocols for inspection of water supply systems and comprehensive testing of drinking water quality, including all parameters under the Uniform Drinking Water Quality Protocol."
What connects the two audits?
At first glance, a failed afforestation mission and contaminated drinking water at railway stations have little in common. But both audits reveal the same administrative problem: policies, targets and protocols that fail at delivering the intended outcome. In the Green India Mission, the government had a target for expanding and improving forest cover, and the CAG found the target overwhelmingly missed, funding never arrived at scale, and monitoring and verification systems were weak. In the Railways, the government had prescribed minimum passenger amenities and drinking-water testing protocols, and the CAG found many stations still lacked basic facilities and testing requirements were not consistently followed.
The audits are separate, but they describe the same gap: the distance between what the rules promise and what reaches the citizen.
