New Delhi, As India's official monsoon season came to an end Monday, the weatherman said five of the 36 meteorological sub-divisions have had deficient rainfall, while rainfall in the country as a whole had been three percent below average.

In its latest report on the annual south-west monsoon released last Friday, the India Meteorological Department (IMD) said Saurashtra, Kutch and Marathwada led the sub-divisions with deficient rainfall, both 24 percent below the long period average (LPA).

The rainfall was 23 percent below LPA in the sub-division that includes Nagaland, Manipur, Mizoram and Tripura. The rainfall in the west Madhya Pradesh sub-divison was 21 percent below LPA and 20 percent below LPA in Kerala.

When the rainfall is over 20 percent below LPA, the IMD defines it as deficient. Going by this definition, the rainfall in Vidarbha - the area in Maharashtra that has seen the highest number of farmer suicides in India in the last few years - was not deficient. But it was still 18 percent below average, while the rainfall in coastal Karnataka was 16 percent below average.

Officially, India's south-west monsoon season is from June 1 to Sep 15. This is the period in which the country gets over 80 percent of its annual rainfall.

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