A parliamentary panel has said that the stretch of the Yamuna in Delhi is severely polluted and virtually dead.

It said 23 of the 33 monitored sites, including six in the national capital, had failed to meet primary water-quality standards.

The panel had reviewed the upper Yamuna river-cleaning projects up to Delhi and river-bed management in the capital.

The report has categorised the Yamuna into three parts — the stretch from Yamunotri to the Hathnikund barriage, which is unpolluted; from the Hathnikund barriage to Palla, which is moderately polluted; and from Palla to Okhla in Delhi, which is severely polluted.

The river stretches 40km in Delhi — from Palla on the Haryana border to Asgarpur in Uttar Pradesh. The report found that the Yamuna is unfit for bathing in Delhi.

Referring to the study of the water-quality assessment of the Yamuna, the committee said that the deteriorating quality parameters called for an urgent and coordinated response from all stakeholders to abate pollution.

The Central Pollution Control Board had selected 33 sites for the water-quality assessment and found that samples from 23 locations had failed to meet primary water-quality standards. The study was conducted between January 2021 and May 2023 by the state pollution control boards.

The analysis was done on the four parameters of dissolved oxygen, pH, biochemical oxygen demand and faecal coliform.

Four monitored locations each in Uttarakhand and Himachal Pradesh complied with the required criteria while the six sites in Haryana failed to meet the standards.

In Delhi, six monitored sites didn’t meet the required standards. However, the Palla site showed improvement.

Yamuna pollution was among the major issues in the recent Assembly elections as the BJP repeatedly targeted the then AAP over its failure to clean the river. The AAP shifted the blame on to the Haryana government.