India records 5.4 mn displacements due to disasters in 2024, highest in 12 years: Report

New Delhi: India recorded 5.4 million displacements in 2024 due to floods, storms and other disasters, the highest figure in 12 years, a new report said on Tuesday. The report by the Geneva-based Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) said that the country recorded 1,700 displacements associated with violence -- fewer than in 2023 when communal violence escalated in Manipur. Further violent incidents in Manipur, including the burning of homes, triggered 1,000 movements in 2024. The IDMC said two-thirds of the internal displacements in India were triggered by floods. It said climate change, deforestation, erosion and the lack of maintenance of dams and embankments were some of the main drivers of risk.

According to the report, Assam saw 2.5 million internal displacements in 2024 due to the most intense floods in more than a decade that struck the state. Storms, including major cyclones, triggered 1.6 million displacements in the country. More than a million displacements were associated with cyclone Dana, which formed in the Bay of Bengal in late October and forced people to flee in Odisha and West Bengal. Most took the form of pre-emptive evacuations in response to alerts from the India Meteorological Department, which prompted state authorities to close schools, set up thousands of shelters and coordinate the movement of hundreds of thousands of people, the report said. West Bengal also saw 2,08,000 displacements due to cyclone Remal, which formed in the Bay of Bengal on May 24, 2024. As Remal moved north, it caused the Brahmaputra river and its tributaries to overflow, triggering about 3,38,000 displacements in Assam. Tripura witnessed its worst monsoon season in more than 40 years in 2024. Heavy rains caused landslides in more than 2,000 locations in mid-August, which altogether triggered 3,15,000 displacements, one of the highest figures on record for this hazard type. Roads were blocked, hampering the delivery of aid.