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The River Ganga is the largest, perennial and one of the sacred rivers in India. It supports the lifeline of major population in urban and rural areas existing in the river basin. The river is a chief source of water supply, power generation, river borne traffic and expansion of the urban industrial belt. However, the river receives huge amount of untreated wastewater which imbalance the nutrient concentration at many points along the stretch. Therefore, the present study is focused to estimate the water pollution using water quality indices such as OPI, NSFWQI, CPI and HPI and identify the imbalance nutrients (i.e. NO3, PO4, heavy metals etc.) in the river. Also, the probability of health risk that might occur by drinking the river water has been classified using RAI. The water samples were collected in post and pre monsoon months in the year 2014-15, from nine sampling locations between Haridwar to Garhmukteshwar. The results indicate that the water quality of river Ganga is unsuitable for drinking during sampling Downloaded by [University of Sussex Library] at 22:13 23 June 20162 months, because the average NSFWQI was found to be 53.44 and 43.56, while CPI was 2.71 and 2.82 in post and pre monsoon, respectively. The river water has been found to be severely contaminated due to heavy metals (i.e. HPI>3) and indicates the human health risk (i.e. RAI>1).Therefore, it has been suggested that the river water must be treated to balance the nutrient concentration before used for drinking. Further, by comparative analysis of indices, NSFWQI and CPI have been found as the better suitable index to classify the status of water quality.

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