India's reservoirs hold 71.8 percent of capacity, against 90.3 percent a year ago

India's main reservoirs held 71.84 percent of their designed live capacity on 1 October, the Central Water Commission figure reported on Monday. That is below the normal storage for the date, which is 81.79 percent, and well below the 90.31 percent recorded on 1 October 2025. The gap with last year is 18.5 percentage points in a single season.

The shortfall is sharpest in the south. Andhra Pradesh, Telangana, Kerala, Tamil Nadu and Karnataka together stood at 49.15 percent of capacity on 1 October. A year earlier the same group was at 87.82 percent. The normal for the date in the south is 76.28 percent. The region is therefore about 27 points under its own normal, and about 39 points under last year. An earlier CWC live-storage report, dated around 24 September and covering 178 reservoirs, had already put national stocks near 70 percent, against a 10-year average of 76.62 percent for that point in the calendar and against 79 percent in 2025. The south's share in that earlier cut was about 50 percent, or 27.926 billion cubic metres, against 87.25 percent last year.

Where the monsoon left the dams

The southwest monsoon closes its official season on 30 September. Indian Express, citing the CWC, reported that the 2026 monsoon ended with a rainfall deficit near 12 percent, and that storage in the 178 reservoirs was at a 10-year low for the date. The 1 October number of 71.84 percent is the first reading after that close. It does not improve on the late-September print. Post-monsoon replenishment, which in a normal year is largely finished by now, has not closed the gap.

Karnataka has already declared drought in 217 of its 240 talukas and put crop losses near Rs 46,000 crore. Maharashtra and Rajasthan are in the same dry band. Reservoir storage is the number that decides rabi sowing, drinking-water releases and hydropower through the winter. A southern system at 49 percent in the first week of October has less water to allocate to a second crop than a system at 88 percent. The CWC does not, in the figures published on Monday, break the 49.15 percent into individual dams. The regional total is the operative fact for state water departments.

What the percentage does and does not say

Live storage is the water that can actually be released, not the volume sitting below the minimum draw-down level. A reading of 71.84 percent of live capacity is therefore already the usable figure. Comparing it with 90.31 percent last year is a like-for-like comparison of usable water, not of gross lake volume. The normal of 81.79 percent is the long-run average for 1 October, so 2026 is about 10 points under a typical post-monsoon level and 18 points under an unusually full 2025.

Hydropower on storage dams will feel the same gap. Almatti on the Krishna, one of the large Karnataka reservoirs, is inside the southern group that is at half capacity. Lower head means fewer units online through the winter months, when thermal plant outages usually push the southern grid onto hydro. The CWC Monday figure does not publish a megawatt estimate. It does publish the water.

The next CWC weekly bulletin will show whether October rains, which are outside the southwest monsoon account, add anything material. On the numbers in hand, the season has closed with the southern dams holding roughly half of what they held a year ago, and the national system holding about four-fifths of its usual 1 October stock. Rabi allocations in the peninsula will be written against that half.