At least 300 people have died in eastern and central India and more than six million others have been affected by floods that have submerged villages, washed away crops, destroyed roads and disrupted power and phone lines.
Heavy monsoon rains have caused rivers, including the mighty Ganges and its tributaries, to burst their banks forcing people into relief camps in the states of Madhya Pradesh, Bihar, Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Uttarakhand.
Government officials in Bihar, which has seen some of the worst flooding this year with almost 120 dead and more than five million affected, said the situation was serious.
"The flood waters have engulfed low-lying areas, homes and fields of crops," said Zafar Rakib, a district magistrate of Katihar, one of 24 districts out of Bihar's 38 districts which have been hit by the deluge.
"We have shifted people to higher ground and they are being provided with cooked rice, clean drinking water, polythene sheets," he said.
In neighbouring Uttar Pradesh, where 43 people have died and over one million are affected, schools were closed in the cities of Varanasi and Allahabad as both the Ganges and Yamuna rivers crossed danger levels and flood waters continued to rise.
The holy city of Varanasi, where thousands of Hindus flock daily, was also forced to halt cremations along the banks of sacred Ganges river -- forcing families to cremate their relatives on the terrace roofs of nearby houses, officials said.
Television pictures showed villagers wading waist deep in floodwaters with their livestock, mud-and-brick homes collapsing and people climbing into wooden boats to get to relief camps.
In the central state of Madhya Pradesh, where at least 70 have died since the onset of the monsoons in June and more than 40,000 homes partially or fully destroyed, almost 20,000 people have been evacuated to relief camps.
India's National Disaster Response Forces (NDRF) have been deployed to the five states, rescuing more than 33,000 people stranded in remote villages.
The devastation prompted Prime Minister Narendra Modi on Monday to offer additional support from the federal government.
