Ganga at Varanasi Falls to 69.76 m on Sunday: CWC

The Central Water Commission recorded the Ganga at Varanasi at 69.76 metres at 2 pm on Sunday, 6 September 2026, down from 70.29 metres on 4 September. The Sunday bulletin put the fall at about one centimetre an hour. That is the material update for the city this weekend: the gauge is turning down, not climbing through a fresh breach of the week’s earlier peak.

Earlier in the week the district and CWC framing used for Varanasi put the warning mark at 70.26 metres and the danger mark at 71.26 metres. Sunday’s 69.76 m sits below the warning line after the 4 September reading of 70.29 m had stood a few centimetres above it. The desk is not calling a Varanasi orange weather alert on the back of this river gauge. The CWC number is a stage reading. It is not an IMD colour code for the district.

The drop matters because the previous midweek pack on this site already carried the warning-cross and boat-suspension lead. Sunday’s story is the recession. From 70.29 m on Thursday to 69.76 m at Sundays 2 pm stamp is a clear downward slope. About one centimetre an hour is the rate the Sunday bulletin attached to that slope. Anyone still writing the river as if it were still pushing through 70.26 m is behind the CWC clock.

Even so, the water that remains on the stone is not a dry ghat. Along the riverfront, steps that usually take pilgrims and boatmen stayed under brown monsoon water. Boat operations that were held back when the gauge sat above warning have not snapped back to a normal morning fleet simply because the needle moved down a few centimetres. Idle hulls and quiet landing points are still part of the Sunday picture. Small riverside shrines that sat in the flood line earlier in the week have not suddenly reappeared above the waterline on the strength of a one-centimetre-an-hour fall alone.

District Magistrate Satyendra Kumar has been the named officer on camp and low-lying monitoring through this spell. Administration attention has stayed on Varuna backflow and waterlogged pockets away from the main channel as much as on the CWC board at the city gauge. Sewage and rainwater complaints in low colonies have not vanished because the Ganga reading improved on Sunday afternoon.

The arithmetic is simple enough for a city that lives by the river’s centimetres. Warning is 70.26 m. Danger is 71.26 m. Thursday’s 70.29 m was above warning and well short of danger. Sunday’s 69.76 m is below warning. The trend is recession at roughly a centimetre an hour. That is the CWC fact set. It does not license a claim that every lane has drained or that every boat is back on hire.

For ghat-side livelihoods the lag is the story under the gauge. Priests, flower sellers and boat crews measure the day by whether steps are walkable and whether a craft can take a fare, not only by a 2 pm bulletin. Sunday’s reading is relief on the chart. It is not yet a full reopening of the riverfront economy.

Until the gauge holds a clear run below warning and the landings actually clear, Varanasi’s flood file remains a receding-river update with constrained ghats, not an all-clear. The CWC stamp at 69.76 m at 2 pm Sunday is the number that moves the file. The idle boats and wet stone are what the city still sees when it looks down the steps.