-The Times of India The empowered group of ministers headed by agriculture minister Sharad Pawar is likely to meet again on Wednesday to discuss measures to counter the impact of spreading drought. The meet, the second in successive weeks, will take place after the India Meteorological Department officially announced a 15% deficit in rainfall for the monsoon season of 2012. Pawar has just concluded his first tour of drought affected states...

-PTI Poor monsoon continues to put pressure on prices of staple vegetables, including tomato and potato, and could further push up retail inflation which is hovering above the double-digit mark. Rates of key veggies are yet to show signs of coming down compared to mid-July due to supply constraint as a result of deficient rainfall across the country. According to IMD, the country has witnessed 19 per cent rain deficiency during the season...

-Reuters Monsoon rains will not be enough to save the country from its first drought in three years, the weather office said on Thursday as it forecast that the El Nino weather pattern should reduce rains again in the second half of the June to September season. India, one of the world's largest food producers and consumers with a population of 1.2 billion, last suffered a drought in 2009, which forced it...

-Reuters Monsoon rains in June to September are likely to be 85 percent of the long-period average, the weather office chief said. "We expect 15 percent shortfall in the seasonal rains," L.S. Rathore, director general of the India Meteorological Department (IMD) told reporters on Friday. The IMD considers a 50-year average rainfall of 89 centimetres as the long-period average rainfall. Monsoon rains are considered deficient - a drought in layman's terms - if...

-The Times of India India could be staring at a drought worse than the one it experienced in 2009. Union agriculture minister Sharad Pawar informed that nearly half of the 624 districts had received deficient rains, another 15% experienced scanty or little rains and a deficit of 21% has been recorded across the country so far- worse than the cumulative deficiency recorded in the corresponding period in 2009. An internal review...