'How much rain fell on June 16 and 17 is NOT known because the area of Kedarnath is not covered by the Indian Meteorological Department,' M Shashidhar Reddy, vice chairman of the National Disaster Management Authority tells Sheela Bhatt. Because of this, the NDMA will not know "what exactly happened over there, in and around the Kedarnath temple."
Binu Alex, co-founder and editorial director of www.commodityonline.com, in an interview to Syed Firdaus Ashraf/Rediff.com, says demand-supply imbalance arising out of the government's inability to preserve the crop for non-harvesting season is the root cause behind the price rise.
The IMD has predicted heavy rainfall over Karnataka and Kerala for the next few days.
Monsoon is expected to cover central and eastern India after Tuesday.
The India Meteorological Department (IMD) has forecast 'extremely heavy rains' at a few places in Marathwada, Mumbai and other parts of the coastal Konkan region of Maharashtra in the next 24 hours.
22 bodies, 13 from Kottayam district and 9 from Idukki were recovered from various rain-hit areas while National Disaster Response Force teams continued their rescue operations.
Rahul Gandhi and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's rallies for Wednesday were cancelled.
Till June 30, the southwest monsoon was 33 per cent lower than normal, which is among the worst in the last five years, with 28 of the 36 meteorological divisions recording deficient rain.
Life in Mumbai was on Wednesday slowly coming back on tracks as rains subsided and hundreds of stranded commuters headed home with the partial resumption of suburban train services.
The NSE Nifty also moved up by 12 points to 8,648.35.
The incident is said to have occurred in the wee hours when a huge mound of earth fell on the 'row houses' and two children and five women were among the deceased, most of whom were plantation workers from neighbouring Tamil Nadu.
Around six lakh people have been housed in over 2000 relief camps in the two states.
the India Meteorological Department has forecast intermittent rain with heavy to very heavy showers in the city and suburbs and extremely heavy rain at isolated places in next 24 hours.
Financials ended mixed despite the status-quo on key rates by the RBI. SBI, ICICI Bank and Axis Bank ended up 0.4-2.5% each.
'It affects our economy, it is very important in many ways.' 'So we have to be the foremost experts in the world on the monsoon.' 'But the best minds in India have not devoted their time to the study of monsoon and they have followed the fashions of the West.'
Pranjul Bhandari, Chief India Economist, HSBC, speaks about a range of issues ranging from inflation, to how Goods and Services Tax and land acquisition bills can help India hit double digit growth, and her impressions about economic growth in the last one year after Narendra Modi took over as India's Prime Minister.
