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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Saturday, June 07, 2003

Rains Brings Respite in Parts of India, Toll Nears 1,350

Sporadic rains and high-velocity dust storms provided welcome break from the stifling heat tormenting most parts of India Friday.


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Heat Wave in India
Sporadic rains and high-velocity dust storms provided welcome break from the stifling heat tormenting most parts of India Friday.

However, 48 more people succumbed to the blazing sun, pushing the countrywide death toll this grueling summer closer to 1,350.

Forty-six deaths were reported in Andhra Pradesh, which is bearing the brunt of the heat fury, and one each in Punjab and Uttar Pradesh since Thursday evening as monsoon further advanced in the Arabian sea.

In south India's Andhra Pradesh, where so far 1,281 people havedied of sunstroke, mercury slid by a few notches in some places, but most parts of the state were still in the grip of intense heat.

Several parts of peninsular India received pre-monsoon showers paving the way for the advance of South-West monsoon towards Kerala in south India.

Weather office said that the heat wave conditions are showing signs of abating in Delhi, south Rajasthan, Punjab, Haryana, UttarPradesh and Jharkhand.

Light showers and severe dust storms, which uprooted trees and knocked out electricity, brought respite in Uttar Pradesh from themid-summer heat as mercury dipped in Lucknow, Agra, Faizabad, Bareilly and Allahabad.

Meanwhile, mercury shot to 46.2 degrees Celsius Friday in Amritsar in north India's Punjab state.

Despite the fall in temperature by two to four degrees Celsius,Kota in Rajasthan in north India reeled under blistering heat withthe mercury soaring to 45 degrees Celsius.

The temperature in West Bengal capital Kolkata and its suburbs dipped by a degree thanks to pre-monsoon showers.

The weather office said that the heat wave was expected to gradually ebb in the coming weeks with the onset of monsoon.

India is heavily dependent on the monsoon, and good rains are seen as crucial to achieving its aim of economic growth of six percent this year.

Some 70 percent of India's people live off the land and agriculture makes up about a quarter of the economy.

The onset of the monsoon also helped buoyed sentiment in the country's stock market. The Sensex on the Bombay Stock market roseby 1.26 percent to 3,303.24 points Friday.

Some experts said that the arrival of monsoon rains a few days behind schedule will not hit the country's crop output as there isno standing crop but it will delay sowing operations.

They said that rice, oilseeds, cotton and other crops would notbe affected if the rains were timely and evenly distributed acrossthe country.


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