To investigate the potential impact of various types of data on weather forecast over the Indian region, a set of data-denial experiments spanning the entire month of July 2012 is executed using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model and its three-dimensional variational (3DVAR) data assimilation system. The experiments are designed to allow the assessment of mass versus wind observations and terrestrial versus space-based instruments, to evaluate the relative importance of the classes of conventional instrument such as radiosonde, and finally to investigate the role of individual spaceborne instruments. The moist total energy norm is used for validation and forecast skill assessment. The results show that the contribution of wind observations toward error reduction is larger than mass observations in the short range (48 h) forecast. Terrestrial-based observations generally contribute more than space-based observations except for the moisture fields, where the role of the space-based instruments becomes more prevalent. Only about 50% of individual instruments are found to be beneficial in this experiment configuration, with the most important role played by radiosondes. Thereafter, Meteosat Atmospheric Motion Vectors (AMVs) (only for short range forecast) and Special Sensor Microwave Imager (SSM/I) are second and third, followed by surface observations, Sounder for Probing Vertical Profiles of Humidity (SAPHIR) radiances and pilot observations. Results of the additional experiments of comparative performance of SSM/I total precipitable water (TPW), Microwave Humidity Sounder (MHS), and SAPHIR radiances indicate that SSM/I is the most important instrument followed by SAPHIR and MHS for improving the quality of the forecast over the Indian region. Further, the impact of single SAPHIR instrument (onboard Megha-Tropiques) is significantly larger compared to three MHS instruments (onboard NOAA-18/19 and MetOp-A).