- City receives more than 300mm of rain in six hours, city officials say.
- Heavy rains force authorities to close schools and colleges.
- CM urges the population to stay at home in the face of adverse weather conditions.
MUMBAI: Life in India's megacity and Bollywood capital Mumbai has been brought to a standstill as heavy monsoon rains dumped more than 300 millimetres of downpour on the metropolis in a matter of hours.
The city, home to about 12 million people, received 11.8 inches of rain over six hours until 7 a.m., civic officials said in a statement.
More than two million people are said to have been affected elsewhere due to overflowing rivers, while flights were also disrupted and schools and universities faced closure due to rains in the metropolis.
With more heavy rains and a high tide of 4.40 metres (14 feet) forecast for the coastal city, schools and universities were closed for the day as a precaution, authorities added.
“There is heavy traffic on the roads and railway lines have also been affected,” Eknath Shinde, Chief Minister of Maharashtra, the western state whose capital is Mumbai, said in X, urging people to stay indoors unless necessary.
Commuters were forced to wade through knee-deep waters that partially submerged their vehicles in many areas, while traffic jams clogged the city's Eastern and Western Express highways.
Water on the tracks forced railway authorities to cancel some long-distance trains, they said, while television images showed some suburban passenger trains, a critical means of daily transport for millions of people, stopped on flooded lines.
The rain, combined with low visibility, led airport authorities to suspend runway operations for more than an hour, airport sources said.
More than 300 flights were delayed and 36 cancelled, the website of tracking service Flightradar24 showed.
In a statement, India's largest airline and budget carrier IndiGo said its flights to Mumbai were affected by heavy rains, while another budget carrier SpiceJet also warned of disruptions due to bad weather.
The heavy downpour came days after record rainfall in the capital New Delhi caused a fatal airport roof collapse.
Torrential monsoon rains have also triggered flooding and landslides in northern and eastern India, as well as in the neighbouring Himalayan nation of Nepal, where at least 11 people have died.
More than two million people have been affected by river flooding in northeastern Assam, where Kaziranga National Park, home to the rare one-horned rhinoceros, was inundated and six of the animals drowned, authorities said Sunday.
State authorities said 66 people have died in flooding and rain-related incidents since May.
Flooding has also affected 31 villages in India's most populous state, Uttar Pradesh, on the border with Nepal, the state government said.
