Banda in the drought-hit Bundelkhand region of Uttar Pradesh has repeatedly been in the news for its record-breaking heat, which has upended daily life in the district.
The heat is so intense that Banda closes by 10 am every day. The situation has prompted Lakhan Gupta, a jeweler of one of the big shops in the district’s Atara town, to leave home at 6 a.m. and finish most of his work before the heat subsides in the district. Suppliers are called quickly. Meetings end before the sun becomes harsh. He came back by 9 o’clock. By 10 o’clock the road outside becomes empty.
The shutters of his shop remain open, but customers rarely come before the evening.
“Since April, I have sold almost nothing,” says Gupta.
“Banda becomes deserted after 10 in the morning. At first only one or two people are seen outside. Then as the day progresses, there is complete silence.”
On April 27 this year, the day temperature in Banda was 47.6 degrees Celsius, the highest anywhere in India that day. According to the Lucknow Meteorological Department, it was the hottest city in the world that day out of 8,212 meteorological stations. This temperature was the highest in Banda since 1951 and surpassed its previous April records of 47.4 degrees Celsius on April 30, 2022 and April 25, 2026.
On 18 May 2026, Banda was once again the hottest in India with 47.6 degrees Celsius. It was also the hottest district in the country the previous day, where the temperature was recorded at 46.4 degrees Celsius on May 17.
The district has been boiling since April 16 this year, when the mercury reached 44.4 degrees Celsius and Banda became the hottest city in the country.
As a result, this summer, farmers in parts of Banda began working in the fields at night under LED floodlights as daytime labor became unbearable. Construction workers stopped working in the afternoon shift. Contractors say workers are voluntarily sacrificing up to 40% of their wages rather than work between 10 am and 5 pm.
Local people say that this year migration has started earlier than usual. Construction sites are struggling to find workers. Food stalls that used to be open till noon now open after sunset.
In large parts of the district, daytime activity has been confined to narrow windows of morning and evening.
In Bhadedu village, Prahlad Valmiki sits inside a 17-by-17-foot room, with a large cooler running continuously against one wall. This provides some relief.
“Banda is getting hotter every year,” he says. “The number of hot days is increasing.”
Valmiki’s wife is the head of the village. During the summer, residents have been coming to him with complaints related to heat, water and failing crops.
“It is time to think seriously about this,” he says. “Otherwise, Banda will become unlivable.”
Meanwhile, at 44 substations in Banda, where power supply is limited to around 16 hours a day, power department staff have been deployed to keep transformers cool amid the scorching heat.
Workers are continuously pouring water on over 1,379 transformers across the district after several units malfunctioned in the last 45 days due to extreme temperatures and excessive load.
Officials said the ongoing heat and rising power consumption have put unusual pressure on the system, prompting emergency measures to prevent further breakdowns and prolonged power outages.
Environmental researchers and local activists say the district’s rising temperatures are not just a result of bad summers or passing heatwaves. He argues that what is happening in Banda is linked to years of ecological degradation in the already fragile Bundelkhand.
A study published in the Journal of Extension Systems, co-authored by Arjun P Verma, assistant professor at Banda Agricultural University, tracked the forest cover in the district from 1991-92 to 2021-22 using satellite and ground data. The findings showed steep declines in every category measured.
The dense forest area recorded simple growth rate (SGR) of minus 16.87% and compound growth rate (CGR) of minus 15.16%. Open forests declined at a similar rapid pace, with SGR at minus 14.57% and CGR at minus 12.57%. Overall, the geographical forest area is also continuously declining.
Difference matters. The SGR measures the average annual decline over the study period. CGR measures how losses grow year over year. In Banda, both indicators were extremely negative in all categories.
“The major reason is large-scale mining and agricultural encroachment inside the forest land,” says Verma.
Then he mentions something that does not come up in the study.
“I myself now work inside the office from 9.30 am to evening,” he says. “I can’t go out in the field.”
The landscape of Banda has always been difficult. Rocky terrain, sparse vegetation and limited water retention made summers harsh even before temperatures soared across northern India.
But researchers say the district has also steadily lost systems that once controlled the heat.
Professor Dinesh Saha, head of the Meteorological Department of Banda Agricultural University, says that the rocky terrain of the area absorbs limited water even under normal circumstances. Due to mining, rivers have started drying up rapidly, which has reduced groundwater recharge. Deforestation has further weakened moisture retention, while dust from stone breaking units settles on soil and vegetation.
“All these factors add up to each other,” says Saha. “The situation is serious.”
The damage is visible in the Vindhya range passing through parts of Banda district.
At Gauri Khanpur village in Baberu, farmer and activist Banda Gopal points to parts of a broken hill where stone-breaking units as well as blasting work are underway.
“Official estimates say that 25% of the Vindhya Hills here have either disappeared or been seriously damaged,” he says.
Gopal says, for 22 years he has been filing complaints with the authorities regarding illegal and excessive mining.
“I kept warning there would be consequences,” he adds. “Now those consequences are visible.”
Local residents allege that mining companies regularly carry out blasting beyond the approved drilling limits. Explosives are used deep inside the mountain sections, while crusher units run continuously nearby, collecting the stones.
Environmental researchers say the consequences go far beyond the visible destruction of the hills.
The Vindhya Range here consists largely of porous sandstone layered over granite. During rainfall, the sandstone absorbs water and slowly releases it underground, helping to recharge aquifers. The granite layer below helps retain groundwater.
Environmentalists say excessive eruptions are destroying this natural recharge system.
Mining and crushing operations have also covered surrounding areas with fine dust, which settles on leaves and soils, reducing their ability to retain moisture. Residents and researchers say the dust and heat combined to significantly alter local conditions over the past decade.
What happened to the mountains is similar to what happened in the rivers of Banda.
The Ken River, which originates in Satna district of Madhya Pradesh and flows for more than 400 kilometers before joining the Yamuna, passes through about 100 kilometers of Banda and surrounding areas. Activists allege that with that expansion, sand extraction has reached industrial scale.
Heavy pokeland machines were seen loading trucks and dumpers directly inside the river, disrupting the natural water flow.
According to social activist and journalist Ramlal Jayan, official estimates suggest that about 55,000 tonnes of red sand is extracted daily from Ken.
But he says mining no longer stops at the river.
“Even after floods, when sand accumulates in nearby fields, they take that away too,” says Jayan, adding that machines remove sand left on agricultural lands after the monsoon, leaving fields damaged and uneven.
Four rivers flow in Banda – Ken, Yamuna, Ranj and Bagai. According to activists and local residents, sand mining that had transformed parts of the Ken and Yamuna has now transformed smaller rivers like Ranj and Bagai. Villagers say water levels have already fallen sharply in many parts, raising fears that farms in remote parts of the district may eventually lose their primary water source.
As per National Green Tribunal guidelines and Mining Department rules, use of heavy machinery is prohibited inside active river channels.
Padmashree awardee and water conservation expert Uma Shankar Pandey, who has extensively studied the Ken, says the Banda stretch of the river has been heavily affected by sand mining.
“Overexploitation has stripped away the natural river sand that used to retain water and recharge groundwater. In its place, exposed rock surfaces increase runoff and reduce water retention,” he says.
Residents of all the villages of Banda say that the groundwater level has been continuously falling in the last few years. The wells dry up in the beginning of summer. The borewells go deeper.
Ecological stress has come from more than one direction.
Jayan points out that according to an RTI response released by the Uttar Pradesh Forest Department in December 2020, the construction of the Bundelkhand Expressway involved the felling of about 1,89,036 trees along the corridor, including thousands of trees in Banda district.
The 2025 study, presented four months ago by researchers from Banda Agricultural University, Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Rohilkhand University, Lucknow University and Banaras Hindu University, found that the total forest area of Banda has declined from about 120 square kilometers in 2005 to about 95 square kilometers now, a decrease of 15.54%.
The dense forest area decreased from about 18 square kilometers to about 12 square kilometers, a decline of 17.55%.
Researchers warned that if degradation continues at current rates, parts of the district could become barren within the next two decades.
None of this exists outside the broader reality of climate change. Rising temperatures across the subcontinent have made heat waves longer and more intense, especially in semi-arid regions like Bundelkhand.
But researchers say local ecological destruction – shrinking forests, damaged hillslopes, depleted rivers and depleting groundwater – has increased Banda’s vulnerability.
Professor Dhruv Sen Singh, Department of Geology, Lucknow University, says, “Banda has become a heat island due to loss of green cover, lack of moisture, increase in sand cover, reduction in the number of water bodies, westerly winds coming from the Thar Desert and last but not least, the vicious cycle of heat, which means the surface remains hot throughout the day and even before the surface heat subsides at night, the day ends with bright sunshine. So there is no respite.”
“Humidity, which also reduces the heat, is almost negligible. The Bundelkhand region has rocky terrain, which increases the heat. Moreover, hot and dry westerly winds are blowing in the Banda region. During summer, an anticyclone develops near the Thar Desert which pushes the hot winds near Banda. Less vegetation and less water budget in Ken and Baghain further aggravates the existing hot conditions,” he says.
VK Joshi, retired Director General of Geological Survey of India, says that Banda is situated in rocky area.
By evening the hustle and bustle gradually returns to Attara market. Tea shops reopened. The shops became busy again. Motorcycles started appearing again on the roads which were empty till afternoon.
Lakhan Gupta stands at the entrance of his jewelery shop watching customers return after sunset.
A large part of Banda has become unusable for six or seven hours every day.
Meanwhile, movement of mining trucks continues from the district.
