Bathinda: The Central Pollution Control Board (CPCB) has acknowledged the degradation of five major rivers — Satluj, Beas, Ravi, Jhelum, and Chenab — in a recent affidavit submitted to the National Green Tribunal (NGT).The report highlighted non-compliance with water quality standards. For the Satluj, 10 of 16 locations monitored failed to meet the quality standards. Seven of these sites were in Punjab and rest of the three in Himachal Pradesh. The report also identified the stretch near the Budda Nullah in Ludhiana as the most heavily polluted section of the river. The Ravi was monitored at 13 points, with two being flagged as non-compliant. One of the points was in Punjab and the other in Jammu & Kashmir. Out of 41 locations monitored for the Beas, four failed the standards, with two each in Punjab and Himachal Pradesh. Water quality is primarily assessed using Biological Oxygen Demand (BOD) levels, a key indicator of organic pollution. The CPCB classifies polluted river stretches into five priority categories. Priority class I represents the most severe contamination—where BOD levels exceed 30 mg/l—while priority class V denotes the least polluted, yet still non-compliant, stretches. The NGT intervention came on a petition from environmentalist Abhisht Kusum Gupta. The petition alleges that the five sister rivers are being systematically destroyed by a combination of factors. These include unregulated industrial discharge from textile, pharmaceutical, and small-scale units, large-scale illegal sand mining and riverbank encroachment, unchecked flow of agricultural runoff, including toxic pesticides and insecticides, continued dumping of untreated municipal waste. In response to these environmental challenges, the CPCB maintains a National Water Quality Monitoring Programme (NWMP). Currently, this initiative oversees 4,922 locations nationwide, ranging from rivers and lakes to groundwater and marine sites.
