1,883 small and big quakes hit India since 2015: Govt

More than 1,880 earthquakes of varying magnitudes, including three measuring above 7M, jolted India during the past three years until this July, Minister of Earth Sciences Harsh Vardhan said in Lok Sabha today.

All the three major earthquakes occurred in 2015.

On April 26 that year, a 7.9M quake struck between Nepal's capital city Kathmandu and another city, Pokhara. On May 12, a second earthquake of 7.3M hit the country's eastern part, near Mount Everest. Nearly 9,000 people died in Nepal.

The third major earthquake hit the Hindu Kush region in Afghanistan.

Although these earthquakes did not have their epicentres in India, tremors were felt in several parts of the country and led to losses to property and claimed lives.

In a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha, Vardhan gave a break-up of the earthquakes that hit India between 2015 and July 12 this year. He said the National Centre for Seismology (NCS) recorded 1,739 quakes with magnitudes between 3 and 5, while 121 quakes had magnitudes between 5.1 and 6.

Twenty quakes were in 6.1-7 magnitude range and three were more than seven (Nepal and Afghanistan).

NCS head Vineet Kumar Gahalaut said that anything in the range of 3-5 M is considered small earthquakes. Quakes that fall in the magnitude range of 5-6 and 6-7 are considered moderate and strong respectively.

Anything beyond 7-8 M is considered major, he explained.

In response to another question, Vardhan said the government plans to use Aerosol Optical Depth to estimate ground-based fine particulate matter (PM) 2.5.

The PM2.5 includes pollutants like sulfate, nitrate and black carbon, which pose the greatest risk to human health.