NDTV Correspondent, Monday October 5, 2009, Hyderabad, Bangalore

AFP image
About 200 people are dead and close to 1 million have been displaced due to the massive floods in southern states of Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh.

One of India’s most prosperous cities Vijayawada is today virtually cut off with highways connecting it to Hyderabad and Chennai under water.

River Krishna has virtually turned into a sea in all its fury and even now threatens to submerge some villages. This is the heaviest flood in river Krishna in more than 106 years.

Army and private boats are being used extensively in Vijayawada and other villages in Krishna district to evacuate people and shift them to relief camps. The levels at the Prakasam barrage have been steadily rising, with the swollen Krishna virtually swallowing the areas on both sides of the river.

The Andhra Pradesh government
has asked the Centre for Rs 6,000 crores for relief measures as water has submerged villages, entered homes leaving lakhs homeless, marooned; families have left as water from the Prakkassam barrage entered the city.
Vijayawada, a bustling city in Andhra Pradesh, has been virtually inundated for the last few days.

About 15,000 people in low-lying areas have been evacuated.

The Andhra Pradesh Chief Minister said he has requested Karnataka not to release water from Almatti and Narayanpur dams upstream unless it is inevitable.

Andhra Pradesh has estimated damages due to heavy rains and floods at Rs 12,225 crore.
Congress president Sonia Gandhi took a closer look at the extent of devastation through an aerial survey of Kurnool and Mahabubnagar. Both districts took the maximum brunt of torrential rains and floods.

Sonia Gandhi will also fly over Bellary in neighbouring Karnataka one of the 10 worst-hit districts of the state.

Rehabilitation on in Karnataka

In Karnataka, the focus is now on rehabilitation efforts. With no rains over the last couple of days, floodwaters have receded but lakhs of people are in relief camps.

The Karnataka Chief Minister BS Yeddyurappa told NDTV that many corporates are pitching in for the relief efforts and many villages will now be shifted permanently.

Meanwhile, the Karnataka Chief Minister appealed to the PM to declare the worst floods in the state since 1972 as a ‘national calamity’ and release Rs 10,000 crore from the National Calamity Contingency Fund
to rehabilitate the affected people.

Meanwhile, Karnataka’s Irrigation Minister Basavaraj Bommai said that the flood damage in Andhra Pradesh could have been lessened if that state had handled its dams properly says. He told NDTV that Karnataka had kept its outflow to the minimum possible.