NEW DELHI / AGARTALA, Jan 6 (TIWN): Disaster management of Union home ministry's experts have warned of a bigger catastrophe, earthquakes with a magnitude of 8.2 or greater on the Richter scale which may hit the already ruptured Himalayan region.

They said quakes with higher intensity than the one that struck Manipur on Monday are likely to rock the region in future. The tectonic shift a series of these recent earthquakes have caused in the region -- Manipur 6.7 (Jan 2016), Nepal 7.3 (May 2015) and Sikkim 6.9 (2011) -- have re-ruptured the plates that had already developed cracks during previous temblors. This has led to conditions which might trigger multiple earthquakes which may go up to 8.0 in magnitude.

In a post-Nepal disaster assessment, the MHA's National Institute of Disaster Management (NIDM) has warned of enhanced risk around the "ring of fire garlanding the entire north India especially the mountains". This was also highlighted at a recent meeting organised by the Centre in Arunachal Pradesh's capital Itanagar where policy-makers from 11 hill states had participated and resolved to develop a common building code for mountains.

Speaking to TOI, NIDM director Santosh Kumar said the interconnected plates across Nepal, Bhutan, Myanmar and India pose a bigger danger, and predicted a disaster of bigger magnitude that awaits hill states and parts of Bihar, UP and even Delhi which fall under the second worst seismic Zone IV classification. The North-East and other hill states fall under severe seismic Zone V.
Though some Indian scientists have reservations, but international experts, prominently Roger Bilham, the seismologist of University of Colorado and an authority on the subject, are of the opinion that "the current conditions might trigger at least four earthquakes greater than 8.0 in magnitude. And if they delay, the strain accumulated during the centuries provokes more catastrophic mega earthquakes."

Kumar said the Centre has taken measures to sensitize the governments of all the hill states to adopt a common building code that is different from the rest of India. The recent Itanagar deliberations on sustainable development of mountain states were part of Centre's earthquake risk mitigation strategy to sensitize policy-makers about "the natural time bomb".