Drought is a natural hazard with severe socio-economic consequences. For agro-based country like India, this may further deteriorate the circumstances, thereby urging for precise quantification. This paper is about the application of meteorological drought indices namely Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), Effective Drought Index (EDI) and Percent Normal Precipitation Index (PNPI) over Marathwada division, Maharashtra, India. The 3-hourly (0.25° × 0.25°) gridded rainfall data is collected from Multi-Source Weighted-Ensemble Precipitation (MSWEP) product for 1979-2014 and is converted to monthly temporal scale. All the three indices give similar results in meteorological drought characterization i.e., most parts of the Marathwada division are affected by frequent moderate or severe droughts while some parts have witnessed extreme drought conditions. However, EDI reveals a majority of the study area affected by extreme droughts, although with low frequency. This study will be helpful to policy makers for effective decision making regarding drought management.