Telangana’s cabinet sub-committee on El Niño met for the first time on Friday and will declare drought-affected mandals by 31 October. Preliminary figures put 358 mandals under drought, reservoir storage at about 170 of 470 TMC ft, and the annual rainfall deficit at 24%. The Chief Minister has warned that water and power stress could last eight to ten months.
For weeks, the evidence of drought in Telangana has been accumulating in rainfall tables and reservoir gauges. On Friday 23 October it moved formally into government. The cabinet sub-committee set up to deal with the effects of El Niño held its first meeting in Hyderabad, chaired by Deputy Chief Minister Mallu Bhatti Vikramarka, and set 31 October as the deadline for declaring a list of drought-affected mandals.
According to Deccan Chronicle, Chief Secretary Sanjay Jaju told the meeting that preliminary assessments show 358 mandals hit by drought and groundwater stress in 324. Reservoirs held about 170 TMC ft of water against a storage capacity of 470 TMC ft, or roughly 36%. Each district collector has been given ₹1 crore of emergency funds, and Panchayat Raj Minister Seethakka said drought-related works worth about ₹7,000 crore are under way.
What the data show
Separate mandal-level data from the Telangana Planning and Development Society (TGDPS), analysed by Deccan Chronicle, show how the drought has spread since the southwest monsoon ended. Between 30 September and 23 October:
- the annual rainfall deficit widened from 17% to 24%;
- the number of mandals in the “deficient” category rose from 306 to 382;
- “large deficient” mandals, with rainfall 60–99% below normal, rose from 5 to 11;
- three districts, Hyderabad, Hanamkonda and Narayanpet, had every mandal in deficit, against none at the end of September.
All 16 of Hyderabad’s mandals are now rain-deficient; on 30 September, three were still normal. The newspaper’s district-level table is partly unclear, so NSH has relied on its mandal counts.
The national picture explains why reservoirs are under pressure. Central Water Commission data for 22 October, reported by Down To Earth, put the 50 reservoirs of the southern region at 42.34% of live capacity, against 89.35% a year earlier and a ten-year average of 77.94%. Nagarjuna Sagar, on the Krishna, stood at 29.68% and Sriram Sagar, on the Godavari, at 44.65%. Across 178 major reservoirs nationally, storage fell by 3.49 billion cubic metres in a single week.
Why October matters
In most years, Telangana’s reservoirs are filled by the southwest monsoon between June and September, with the retreating monsoon and northeast monsoon adding a top-up in October. That cushion carries the state through the dry months until the next June. This year the monsoon ended with a 17% deficit and October has been almost rainless; NSH reported on 23 October that Hyderabad had received 2.8 mm against a normal of about 114 mm for the month.
El Niño, the periodic warming of the eastern tropical Pacific, is associated with weaker Indian monsoons and has been cited by the state government throughout. The connection is statistical rather than certain: not every El Niño year brings drought, and not every drought follows El Niño.
Groundwater and power
The drought’s sharpest edge may be underground. Speaking at a party meeting at Praja Bhavan on Friday, Bhatti Vikramarka said Telangana has about 30 lakh agricultural pump sets and that groundwater levels have fallen in areas served by about 15 lakh of them, according to Siasat. Pumps that run in near-dry borewells burn out, a direct financial loss to farmers.
Geology makes the problem worse. Most of Telangana sits on hard granite and gneiss, whose aquifers store water only in weathered layers and fractures. They fill quickly in a good monsoon but hold little and drain fast, which is why borewells across the state can fail within weeks of a poor rainy season, and why recovery depends on the next monsoon rather than on a single storm.
Falling hydropower and rising demand have also pushed peak electricity demand to 20,018 MW, he said. On 22 October the government set a target of 140 million units a day from thermal plants.
The policy response
Chief Minister A. Revanth Reddy, at the same meeting, warned that the drought could last eight to ten months. He said project storage was below 20% of capacity and available water no more than 200 TMC, with some projects at dead storage, and that drinking water for people and livestock would take priority over irrigation. These figures differ from the Chief Secretary’s 170 TMC ft and the TGDPS deficit of 24% (Bhatti Vikramarka cited 27%); NSH reports each as attributed.
The government’s plan rests on four principles: protect drinking water, keep electricity uninterrupted, generate rural employment, and support farmers in switching to less water-intensive crops. Irrigation Minister N. Uttam Kumar Reddy said farmers should not grow paddy in the coming rabi season. Agriculture Minister Tummala Nageswara Rao proposed weekly district reports on groundwater and temperature. The Chief Minister announced an employment scheme from Sankranti to May to restore ponds, canals and small water bodies, and a toll-free number for drinking-water complaints.
Bhatti Vikramarka asked officials for a “scientific” assessment that would include mandals where drought impact exceeds 20%, not only the worst affected. Formal declaration matters because it unlocks relief under national disaster-response norms, including input subsidies and the deferral of farm loans.
What the cyclone may change
The Bay of Bengal system forecast to become Cyclone Arnab could bring some rain to Telangana next week, but its heaviest falls are expected along the Andhra and Odisha coasts. A single storm would also do little for groundwater, which recharges slowly. The drought is likely to persist into the summer of 2027, as the Chief Minister warned, whatever the coming week brings.
