NEW DELHI: The city has had 446 earthquakes between 1993 and 2025 with the epicentre within 50km of Monday’s epicentre or within the NCR states. National Centre for Seismology (NCS) said the 4 magnitude tremors felt more intense because the quake origin was at a shallow depth of 5km.
Between 1993 and 2025, the region has had quakes measuring from magnitude 1.1 (minor) to 4.6 (medium intensity). The magnitude of 4.6 was reported on Nov 25, 2007, 6km northwest of Monday’s event. NCS received 191 felt reports within one hour of Monday’s quake from Delhi-NCR, Haryana and western Uttar Pradesh.
NCS’s report said the intensity ranged “from II to III on Modified Mercalli Intensity (MMI) scale. Felt reports of maximum intensity IV MMI scale in the epicentral region and minimum intensity III MMI scale were reported from a distance of 0-15km from the epicentre.”
It explained that while the nearest fault lines – Mathura and Sohna – were located in close proximity to the epicentre, Monday’s quake occurred not due to plate movement but because of “normal faulting” that supported the concept of hydro fracturing, or the breaking of the base rock due to stress accumulation caused by a gas or water. The epicentre was 5km beneath a lake bed in a park in southwest Delhi’s Dhaula Kuan.
“The source zone beneath Jheel Park, the epicentre on Monday, is not associated with any of the known seismogenic faults. The quake rather occurred away from the Sohna and Mahendragarh Fault while it occurred near the set of several lineaments (weak zones) that might have broken due to structural heterogeneities embedded with past riverine or lacustrine deposits at depths through hydro-fracturing,” the NCS read.
The report also said that the quake zone released energy prior to reaching its threshold thus avoiding a major quake in the future. “The signature of today’s earthquake, M4.0, is a good signature as the rock materials of the source zone released energy prior to reaching its maximum credible past earthquake M4.6 of 2007 that occurred in the same epicentre source zone. The shaking was intense because of the shallow depth of 5km and intensity of level IV. There is no report of any casualties in the area,” NCS said.
The region has seen several quakes in the past, with NCS documenting more than 30 seismic events in the region between April and August 2020. In 2022-23, until March, the area recorded over 15 earthquakes, with the strongest being of 3.8 magnitude. According to NCS, besides the 4.6 magnitude quake in 2007, others in the vicinity of Monday’s epicentre were a 3.5 quake in April 2020 and a 4.5 magnitude temblor in May 2020.
Having been inhabited for a long time, earthquakes hitting Delhi and the surrounding region have always been recorded. It has already seen extreme historic quakes in the past, such as the 1720 Delhi earthquake (6.5 magnitude), the 1903 Mathura earthquake, the strongest on record at 6.8 magnitude, and the 1956 Bulandshahar earthquake (6.7).
