NEW DELHI - India's annual southwest monsoon rains, crucial for its farm-dependent economy, are advancing slowly but weakly northwards, weather officials said Friday, as the death toll in a heatwave baking parts of the country hit 329.
"The southwest monsoon has advanced as a weak current" from the south to western, central and eastern India, Indian Meteorological Department officials said in their latest bulletin.
"The heat wave conditions have abated from the entire country except extreme northwest Rajasthan," India's western desert state, the weather report said.
An Indian Meteorological Department official, however, described the monsoon rains received since they began in southern India on June 5 as "deficient".
"The current is a weak one but it is spreading to both the west and east," he said.
Meanwhile, a spokesman for the Orissa state government in eastern India said a severe heatwave in the state over the past few weeks had claimed 132 lives.
Scanty monsoon rains had brought some respite since Thursday to Orissa but also raised the levels of humidity, he said.
The toll across India due to the searing heat was 329, the Press Trust of India news agency said.
The monsoons struck India's mainland on June 5, four days later than usual, and advanced over parts of southern India before getting stuck over the western state of Goa for more than a week.
The weather office then reported its movement northwards on June 13 -- progressing slowly over central and northeastern India.
06/24/2005 10:12 GMT