Indian water reservoirs were at 16% capacity last week

India's main water reservoirs were at 16 per cent of their storage capacity in the week leading up to June 9, that is 11 percentage points lower than a year ago, the water resources ministry said here on Friday.

"The water storage available in 91 major reservoirs of the country for the week ending on June 09, 2016, was 24.85 BCM (billion cubic metres) which is 16 per cent of total storage capacity of these reservoirs," the ministry said in a statement.

"This was 58 per cent of the storage of corresponding period of last year and 79 per cent of storage of average of last ten years," it added.

The annual monsoon arrived in India at the coast of Kerala on Wednesday.

Tripura, Rajasthan and Andhra Pradesh currently have better storage than during the corresponding period last year, the statement said.

"States having lesser storage than last year are Himachal Pradesh, Punjab, West Bengal, Jharkhand, Odisha, Gujarat, Maharashtra, Uttar Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Chhattisgarh, Telangana, Tamil Nadu, Karnataka and Kerala," it added.

--IANS

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