Drought is a natural disaster affects water resources, agriculture, and social and economic development due to its long-term and frequent occurrence. It is crucial to characterize and monitor drought and its propagation to minimize the impact. However, spatiotemporal assessment of drought characteristics over India at the sub-basin scale based on terrestrial water storage is unexplored. In this study, the Terrestrial water storage anomalies (TWSA) obtained from a Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment and precipitation data are used to characterize the propagation of drought. Combined Climatological Deviation Index (CCDI) and GRACE-Drought Severity Index (GRACE-DSI) were computed as CCDI utilizes both precipitation and TWSA data while GRACE-DSI uses only TWSA data. Our results showed that GRACE-DSI exhibits significant negative trends over most of the Indian sub-basins compared to CCDI, indicating that most of the drought events are due to depletion of TWS. While other sub-basins show changing trends for GRACE-DSI and CCDI. The number of sub-basins showing significant negative trends for GRACE-DSI is more than that for CCDI. Hence TWS is depleting for most of the subbasins in India. Our results show that Indo-Gangetic plains face many drought events during 2002–2004, 2009–2014 & 2015–2017. Maximum drought duration and drought severity obtained for the area of North Ladakh (not draining into Indus basins) by GRACE-DSI are 26 months (2002–2004) and − 44.2835, respectively. The maximum drought duration and drought severity obtained for the Shyok sub-basin by CCDI is 17 months (2013–2015) and − 13.4392, respectively. Monthly trend analysis revealed that 39 & 23 no. of sub-basins show significant negative GRACE-DSI trends for October and CCDI for November, respectively. At the same time, the seasonal trend shows that total 34 and 14 sub-basins exhibited a significant negative trend at post-monsoon Kharif season for both the GRACE-DSI & CCDI, respectively.

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