Around 59 per cent of India, covering all states, is prone to earthquakes of different intensities, minister of state for science and technology and earth sciences, Jitendra Singh informed the Lok Sabha on Friday. Listing out the measures taken by his department to monitor earthquakes, the minister said that around 11 per cent area of the country falls in zone 5 of the seismic map, which is the most active region, 18 per cent are in zone 4. In his written reply, the minister submitted a list of cities according to the seismic zones.
Zone 5 (high seismic activity): Bhuj (Gujarat), Darbhanga (Bihar), Guwahati (Assam), Imphal (Manipur), Jorhat (Assam), Kohima (Nagaland), Mandi (Himachal Pradesh), Port Blair (Andaman and Nicobar), Srinagar (Jammu and Kashmir), Tezpur (Assam), Sadiya (Assam)
Zone 4: Almora (Uttarakhand), Ambala (Haryana), Amritsar (Punjab), Baharich (Uttar Pradesh), Barauni (Bihar), Bulandshahr (Uttar Pradesh), Chandigarh, Darjeeling (West Bengal), Dehradun (Uttarakhand), Deoria (Uttar Pradesh), Delhi, Dinajpur (West Bengal), Ghaziabad (Uttar Pradesh), Gangtok (Sikkim), Gorakhpur (Uttar Pradesh), Jal Paiguri (West Bengal), Kooch Behar (West Bengal), Kolkata (West Bengal), Ludhiana (Punjab), Monghyr (Bihar), Moradabad (Uttar Pradesh), Nainital (Uttarakhand), Patna (Bihar), Pilibhit (Uttar Pradesh), Roorkee (Uttarakhand), Shimla (Himachal Pradesh)
According to the Seismic Zonation map by the Bureau of Indian Standards, there are several zones, ranging from 2 to 5 with the variability of peak ground acceleration. West Bengal, in this map, falls under Zone 2,3, and 4. A larger portion of West Bengal state lies in Zone 3. Uttar Pradesh too falls in all 2,3 and 4 categories.