New Delhi: The Centre has asked Himalayan states and Jammu & Kashmir to accelerate early-warning and evacuation measures against glacial lake outburst floods (GLOF) and snow avalanches, warning that emergency response alone cannot adequately protect exposed communities. The direction followed a high-level preparedness review chaired by the Union home secretary, Govind Mohan, in New Delhi on Thursday.
The chief secretaries and disaster management authorities from Uttarakhand, Himachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Arunachal Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir attended the meeting, alongside senior officials from the home ministry and several scientific agencies. These included the National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA), Central Water Commission (CWC), India Meteorological Department and Defence Geoinformatics Research Establishment (DGRE).
The review examined the monitoring of vulnerable glacial lakes and snow-covered areas, identification of high-risk locations, mapping of potential flood paths and timely delivery of alerts to threatened settlements. Evacuation plans, community preparedness and the positioning of emergency-response resources were also scrutinized, according to a Union home ministry statement.
The participating administrations outlined their respective mitigation plans, including field surveys of glacial lakes, improvements to warning systems and arrangements for communicating alerts to remote communities. The discussions focused particularly on ensuring that scientific assessments and policies drawn up at the national and state levels produce measurable action in districts, villages and other vulnerable locations.
Mohan called for continuous surveillance of glacial lakes and avalanche-prone areas during periods of elevated risk, when rapidly changing weather or snow conditions can sharply reduce the available warning time. He also sought closer coordination between state agencies, district administrations and scientific institutions so that warnings lead quickly to alerts, evacuations and the deployment of rescue resources.
The home secretary said preparedness must shift from a predominantly response-led approach to risk-based planning, preventive mitigation and community-level readiness. States and the Union territory were asked to identify gaps in their warning and evacuation arrangements, undertake corrective measures before an emergency and accelerate the GLOF mitigation project sanctioned by the Centre in 2024.
The ₹150 crore National GLOF Risk Mitigation Programme covers Himachal Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Sikkim and Arunachal Pradesh, with ₹52.50 crore earmarked for monitoring and early-warning systems. Its mandate includes hazard assessments, surveillance, structural and non-structural mitigation, warning infrastructure, community awareness and local capacity-building.
The scale of the challenge remains considerable: the CWC monitors 2,485 glacial lakes larger than 10 hectares across the Indian Himalayan river basins between June and October using satellite-based remote sensing. An NDMA-led assessment of 189 high-risk lakes in 2025 classified 56 as “very high risk”, although the government told the Lok Sabha in July that no end-to-end GLOF warning system had yet been commissioned under the national programme.
A GLOF occurs when a large volume of water retained in a glacial lake is suddenly released after the natural dam containing it fails or is overtopped. Such failures may be triggered by falling ice or rock, landslides, avalanches, intense rainfall or instability in ice and moraine dams, while the escaping water can gather sediment and debris as it rushes downstream.
The meeting came eight days after a glacier collapse in Nepal sent ice, rock and mud through valleys near the country’s border with Tibet, demonstrating how a remote high-altitude event can develop into a major downstream catastrophe. At least 1,252 people had been killed in Nepal and more than 4,200 remained missing by Thursday, according to Reuters.
India experienced a comparable warning on October 4, 2023, when the South Lhonak Lake outburst devastated the Teesta valley in Sikkim, destroying the Teesta III hydropower dam and damaging bridges, roads and settlements. Scientific assessments recorded 55 deaths and about 70 people missing, while highlighting the need for basin-wide warning systems that account for landslides, debris flows and other cascading hazards rather than monitoring lake levels alone.
Avalanche monitoring is supported separately by the DGRE, which issues operational warnings to the Army and civilians in snowbound parts of the northwestern Himalayas. Government data published in March 2025 showed that the agency had 72 snow meteorological observatories and 45 operational automated weather stations, besides avalanche maps, radar systems and modelling tools intended to provide forecasts at least 24 hours in advance.