Monsoon mayhem: Govt says over 1000 people died in rain, lightning strikes between April-July

New Delhi: More than 1,600 people died due to rain and lightning during the four-month period from April to July this year, Parliament was informed on Wednesday.

Minister of State for Home Affairs Nityanand Rai shared the data in a written reply to a question in the Rajya Sabha

Based on information received from various state governments and union territories, 1,626 people died due to rain and lightning strikes till July 31 in 2025-26, he said, adding that the Ministry of Home Affairs does not centrally maintain the data of damages due to disasters. Lives of 52,367 animals were also lost due to hydro-meteorological disasters and 1,57,817.6 hectares of crop area was affected during this period, the minister said.

Rai said the central government has approved ‘Mitigation Project on Lightning Safety’ for a total financial outlay of Rs 186.78 crore for 50 lightning-prone districts of 10 states -- Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Meghalaya, Odisha, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal.

“The aim of this project is to help reduce the mortality of human beings, loss

of livestock and damage to infrastructure due to lightning. The project also aims to develop self-reliance through research, development, manufacturing and technological advancements in the field of lightning risk management,” he said.

He said the Indian Institute of Tropical Meteorology, Pune, has established a

lightning location network with 112 sensors spread over the country to accurately locate and detect the occurrence of lightning. As each sensor can have a coverage radius of 200 to 250 km, the whole country is now covered by this network, he added.

Rai said that by using valuable information from the lightning location network, a mobile app, ‘DAMINI: Lightning Alert’, has been developed. It gives the exact location of current lightning strikes around user location and issues the lightning warning for a 20 and 40 square kilometre radius in advance.

Rai said the India Meteorological Department (IMD) has established a comprehensive system for the seamless monitoring, forecasting and dissemination of warnings for thunderstorm and lightning hazards. “This system enables location-specific monitoring down to the district and city levels, with temporal resolution ranging from minutes to hours. It currently operates a ground-based lightning detection network comprising 102 sensors strategically distributed across India,” he said.

Rai said the IMD issues thunderstorm and lightning warnings up to five days in advance, leveraging Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) models and synoptic-scale analysis. “These forecasts are provided in multi-hazard colour-coded formats at the meteorological sub-division and district levels, and are updated every six hours,”

he said.