The national capital, parts of which reeled under heatwave conditions for the past few days, had some relief on Wednesday with strong winds and partly cloudy skies witnessed during the day.
Other prominent candidates among the 904 in the fray are Union minister Anurag Thakur, West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee's nephew Abhishek Banerjee, RJD supremo Lalu Prasad's daughter Misa Bharti.
India is set to experience extreme heat during the April to June period, with the central and western peninsular parts expected to face the worst impact, the IMD said on Monday as the country prepares for seven-phase general elections from April 19.
A tormenting heatwave swept through North India on Sunday with the mercury crossing 49 degrees Celsius in pockets of Delhi, while the weather office forecast some relief Monday onwards.
The police have put up barricades, tippers and rolled out water cannons to prevent protesting farmers from entering Chandigarh.
"We are expecting that the temperature will be higher than normal in the entire northwest India and the adjoining central India, starting with Gujarat, Rajasthan and up to east Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh," he said at a virtual event on 'Building Climate Resilience for the Most Heat Vulnerable'.
The marathon polling process to elect the 18th Lok Sabha ended on Saturday with the seventh phase of elections witnessing an approximate voter turnout of 62.36 per cent, amid clashes between Trinamool Congress and Bharatiya Janata Party supporters in Sandeshkhali and some other parts of West Bengal.
Intense heat swept through east India and parts of the southern peninsular region on Thursday, testing power grids and prompting the Kerala government to order closure of educational institutions till May 6.
Delhi's primary weather station, the Safdarjung Observatory, registered a maximum temperature of 40.4 degrees Celsius, four notches higher than normal.
The heat wave is the result of an anti-cyclone over Pakistan and western Rajasthan, the impact of which is being felt across the northern plains.
With the cooling down of heatwaves as the monsoon spreads across the country, power demand has fallen by 12.5 per cent from the start of this month till Monday. Peak power demand of the country had touched a record of 210 Gw last week, mostly due to rising temperatures and opening up of the economy. Compared with the beginning of this month, almost all states have seen a fall in power demand. Punjab, however, is an exception where the power demand on Monday was 17 per cent higher than on June 1.
The national capital battled weather conditions in the "red category" as the maximum temperature recorded at the Palam observatory was 46.1C,
In Rajasthan, 13 deaths related to rain and storm were reported over the last two days while at least 12 people were killed due to lightning strikes in Jharkhand during the same period, officials said.
Several global models are predicting El Nio to appear around the second half of the year, which are the crucial rain-bearing months.
India is likely to experience below-normal monsoon rainfall this year, with a 20 per cent chance of drought due to the end of La Nina conditions and the potential for El Nino to take hold, private forecasting agency Skymet Weather said on Monday.
Temperatures in March will be critical to determining the impact of any unusual heatwave conditions on this year's wheat crop in North India. It is that time of the year when the crop enters its vital grain-filling stage, say meteorologists and crop experts. So far, the high day temperatures in the North are not believed to have any significant impact on the final yields since the crop hasn't entered a stage where heat affects yields.
The average temperatures observed pan-India for April was 35.05 degrees, which was the fourth highest in 122 years.
Santosh Patkar of Devgadh Taluka Sindhudurg district of Maharashtra is a worried man these days. Devgadh, which is known as the home to world famous Alphonso variety of mangoes, has seen an unusual drop in yields which is affecting farmers' income. Being one of the primary agricultural produce from the area, Santosh is not untouched by this somewhat rare phenomenon. He said in his own mango garden, yields have come down by a third from most trees.
Large swathes of the country reeled under heatwave conditions on Tuesday with Churu in Rajasthan recording a high of 48 degree Celsius.
In Delhi, Safdarjung, the base station for the national capital, recorded 44.2 degrees Celsius, while Mungeshpur observatory in northwest Delhi, reported 47.3 degrees Celsius.
Parts of northern and western India reeled under scorching heat with temperatures hovering near the 50 degree-mark in Rajasthan, while the India Meteorological Department said no immediate respite is likely from the ongoing heatwave conditions.
India's wheat production is projected to have declined nearly 3 per cent to 106.84 million tonnes while the overall foodgrain production is estimated to have touched record 315.72 million tonnes in the 2021-22 crop year. The wheat production is estimated to have declined due to heatwave that resulted in shrivelled grains in the northern states of Punjab and Haryana. Releasing the fourth advance estimate for the 2021-22 crop year, the Union agriculture ministry on Wednesday said a record output is also estimated for rice, maize, gram, pulses, rapeseed and mustard, oilseeds and sugarcane.
The government has no plans to import wheat as it has sufficient stocks to meet the country's requirements, official sources said. The Food Corporation of India (FCI) has enough stock for public distribution, they added. "There are no plans to import wheat into India. "The country has sufficient stocks to meet our domestic requirements," a source said.
The mercury in Delhi, which recorded its hottest day of the year so far at 45.6 degrees Celsius on Sunday, came down to 42.4 degrees Celsius, according to the India meteorological department.
Delhi is likely to receive the first monsoon showers on June 30 or July 1, India Meteorological Department (IMD) officials said on Tuesday.
In the first of a two-part series, Business Standard examines the impact of the upcoming summer on agriculture and drinking water supply.
Parts of Telangana are currently reeling under a heat wave that has already claimed 21 lives even as the meteorological department officials warned that day temperature would shoot up further.
"The season averaged maximum temperatures in Himachal Pradesh, West Rajasthan, Konkan, Goa, Coastal Karnataka, Kerala and Arunachal Pradesh are likely to be higher than normal by 0.5-1.0 degree Celsius," the Met department has said in its forecast.
There was no relief for the national capital, with the mercury crossing the 44C mark in some parts of the city.
The four, including two women, were seated in S-8 and S-9 coaches, which are non-AC, and other passengers claimed that they died due to excessive heat.
IMD has said the temperature in April-June across most parts in India is expected to be 0.5-1 degrees Celsius warmer than normal. However, doctors and scientists say they haven't found any direct correlation between the speed of COVID-19 spread and warm weather.
The dust storm was an outcome of the extremely hot conditions.
Of that figure, a whopping 4,246 people died in Andhra Pradesh and Telangana alone.
The IMD chief also allayed fears of occurrence of an El-Nino.
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