Question raised in Lok Sabha on Quality of Drinking Water, 28/07/2016. In order to streamline the mechanism of testing quality of drinking water, the Ministry has published the Uniform Drinking Water Quality Monitoring Protocol and widely distributed to all the States upto the district level. The Protocol defines parameters of testing, frequency of sampling, laboratory requirements like
chemicals, glassware, manpower, space, etc. at various levels ie., the State, district, sub-division and block level laboratories. The State level laboratory shall focus on monitoring specific contaminants like heavy metals, pesticides and conduct virological examination if bacteriological contamination is very high. The District and Sub-district laboratories should monitor twice a year every source for bacteriological parameters and once a year for chemical parameters.