Chitralekha Sengupta¹, Dipu Sukumaran^1,, Dipanjali Barui¹, Rita Saha¹, Abhijit Chattopadhyay¹, Asish Naskar¹, Suneel Dave²

Several factors affect microorganism survival and distribution in the aquatic environment including humans and animal populations. Present study assessed the influence of physicochemical factors on the distribution of presumptive coliform along the stretch of River Ganga in West Bengal, India. Nevertheless, Ganga water is polluted by drainage waste released from various urban and rural regions, agricultural and domestic wastes, industrial effluents and human activities. Drains discharge major portions of domestic wastes and untreated sewages, into the aquatic environment. Physico-Chemical factors affecting the survival of fecal microorganisms in the River Ganga as per the study included parameters like pH, conductivity, alkalinity, biochemical oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD) etc. In Ganga some parameters were seen to vary dramatically along the stretch. All the stations had the total coliform counts of more than 500 and Tribeni being the upstream station had lower value for coliforms. Ganga Sagar was found to have the least count for coliforms because of high salinity.

River Ganga, faecal coliform, total coliform, drains