MUMBAI, June 1: Lightning storms and monsoon rains lashing parts of India have killed 36 people and wrought havoc in Mumbai.

Strong winds with speeds of 100 kilometres per hour, lightning and heavy rains killed 26 people and injured 38 in Uttar Pradesh overnight.

“At least 26 people have died and 38 are injured because of lightning and houses collapsing in the past 24 hours,” Ghulam Abbas, a police spokesman, said in state capital Lucknow.

The Press Trust of India (PTI), quoting officials, said nine people had been killed by lightning in various incidents in West Bengal.

In Mumbai, the early-arriving monsoon caused travel chaos and brought back memories of last year’s devastating floods that left hundreds dead.

One man drowned in the stormy sea off Mumbai and commuters were stranded for hours late on Wednesday because of flooded roads and late-running trains.

The monsoon rains arrived several days earlier than expected and city officials had not yet completed anti-flooding measures, including finishing a project to dredge a river that runs through the city.

“It has taken one heavy rainfall at the beginning of the season for the authorities to have been caught unprepared,” said an editorial in the DNA newspaper.

The city was lashed by intermittent rains for a second day on Thursday, with low-lying areas becoming waterlogged and road and rail traffic being partially disrupted.

Weather officials said the heavy rains were expected to continue until Friday.

Environmentalist Anil Bhatia said Mumbai was better prepared for the rains this year after record rainfall in July last year swept away slum dwellings, cut electricity and severed the city from the rest of the country for a day.

Neglected drainage facilities and rampant illegal development, which left natural waterways blocked, were blamed for many of the problems.

Bhatia said decades of people flowing into the city of nearly 20 million, development and concreting of green spaces had all added to the city’s drainage woes. “Land use change has become so predominant, I would say it would take up to five years before we have a (anti-flooding) system in place again,” he said.—AFP