WATER QUALITY INDEX OF YAMUNA RIVER IN DELHI REGION DUE TO COMMUNITY LOCKDOWN AMID COVID-19 PANDEMICVinod Kumar Chaudhary, Arun Lal Srivastav, Rinku, Naveen Patel, Ram Balak Singh and Abhishek Kumar BhardwajAbstract COVID-19 pandemic has created a panic situation to the whole world because of its rapid contagious expansion in human beings. Social lockdown has been imposed throughout world including India to decrease the number of infections in public as no vaccine is available for its cure (at that time). During lockdown, the water quality of river Yamuna got improved as the entire commercial premises and industries were shut down. This paper presents the improvement of Yamuna river water quality in terms of DO, BOD, COD, pH, conductivity and suspended solids during first phase of lockdown (3 weeks) started from March 24th 2020 to April 14th, 2020 on the basis of data available on the website of CPCB, India. pH values were examined in the range from 7.1 to 8.7 (pre-lockdown) and it was decreased in a range of 7.2 -7.8 (post-lockdown). Similarly, 57% conductivity reduction in river water and 34% TSS reduction in drain water were recorded in postlockdown time. On an average of 62% BOD and 60% COD load of river Yamuna has been reduced in just three weeks of lockdown time period. |