ERROR: Failed to parse POMs (How to Fix)

recently had this problem while working on the Jenkins build release,

ERROR: Failed to parse POMs
java.io.IOException: Can't read POM: /opt/gamma/.jenkins/jobs/indra-parent/workspace/pom.xml
	at jenkins.plugins.maveninfo.extractor.properties.PomPropertiesFinder.findProperties(PomPropertiesFinder.java:54)
	at jenkins.plugins.maveninfo.extractor.MavenInfoExtractor.extract(MavenInfoExtractor.java:58)
	at jenkins.plugins.maveninfo.extractor.MavenInfoEnvironment.tearDown(MavenInfoEnvironment.java:42)
	at hudson.maven.MavenModuleSetBuild$MavenModuleSetBuildExecution.doRun(MavenModuleSetBuild.java:882)
	at hudson.model.AbstractBuild$AbstractBuildExecution.run(AbstractBuild.java:534)
	at hudson.model.Run.execute(Run.java:1720)
	at hudson.maven.MavenModuleSetBuild.run(MavenModuleSetBuild.java:531)
	at hudson.model.ResourceController.execute(ResourceController.java:98)
	at hudson.model.Executor.run(Executor.java:410)

maven has actually been built and turned out to be a pom.xml header

The error was caused by a corrupt XML header which contained merge conflicts.

head is normal after modification for the following

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<project xmlns="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0" xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
		 xsi:schemaLocation="http://maven.apache.org/POM/4.0.0 http://maven.apache.org/xsd/maven-4.0.0.xsd">
	


Read More: