4 min readUpdated: Feb 2, 2026 01:11 PM IST
Accommodating a long-pending demand of the states, the 16th Finance Commission has recommended that heatwave and lightning be included in the list of notified disasters under the Disaster Management Act. This will enable the states to use money in the State Disaster Response Fund (SDRF) for providing relief and assistance to people affected by heatwaves and lightning.
The current list of notified disasters has 12 entries – cyclone, drought, earthquake, fire, flood, tsunami, hailstorm, landslides, avalanches, cloudburst, pest attack, and frost and cold waves. States can use the money in the SDRF to deal with these disasters. In addition, they had the flexibility of utilising this money for some other ‘state-specific’ disasters as well, but only up to 10 per cent of the fund. So, states could only bank on a maximum of 10 per cent of their SDRF allocation to deal with heatwave or lightning events.
The inclusion of heatwaves and lightning in the notified disasters would enable them to use their SDRF money to their full extent for responding to such events.
This had been a long-pending demand of the state governments considering that both heatwaves and lightning have become frequent events with largescale impacts.
This issue had been considered by the 15th Finance Commission as well, but it had concluded that the existing list of notified disasters “covers the needs of the States to a large extent”, and “did not find much merit” in the demands of the state governments at that time.
In the meanwhile, eleven states had notified heatwave as “state-specific disaster” and 16 states had notified lightning. These states were already using up to ten per cent of the SDRF funds towards relief and response towards these events.
While making its decision, the 16th Finance Commission took note of the fact that there had been significant increase in the frequency and intensity of hot days, along with a very noticeable rise in the number of warm nights, particularly in the last one decade. Similarly, it observed that the “escalating threat” of lightning demanded urgent recognition as national disaster, especially since these disproportionately affected the most vulnerable populations.
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“Although states currently have the flexibility to use 10 per cent of SDRF allocations for state-specific disasters, the rising severity, frequency and impact of heatwaves and lightning warrant their inclusion in the nationally notified list of disasters. Both heatwaves and lightning are severe events that have caused significant loss of life. Given their scale and the fact that they often exceed the coping capacity of affected communities, they merit inclusion in the list of notified disasters at the national level,” the 16th Finance Commission said in its report.
The states can continue to use up to 10 per cent of the SDRF money of other non-notified disasters within their jurisdiction.
The 16th Finance Commission recommended a total of Rs 2.04 lakh crore to be allocated to states for disaster management for the next five years, up from 1.6 lakh crore allocated by the previous Finance Commission for the period 2021-26. But it has not conceded the demands of the state to increase the share of Central government’s contribution towards the allocation. The Commission has retained the 75:25 sharing formula wherein the central government contributes 75 per cent of the total allocation, while the remaining 25 per cent have to come from the states themselves. Many states had been demanding that this be changed to 90:10, as is the case with northeastern and hilly states.
The Commission also stressed on the need for finding alternative instruments for disaster financing, including insurance mechanisms, to keep with the rising costs of disaster management.