Regulate release of flood waters from Koyna reservoir: Yediyurappa to Fadnavis

Bengaluru: Karnataka chief minister B.S.Yediyurappa on Monday carried out aerial surveys of flood affected regions in the northern parts of the state as a result of heavy downpour and unregulated release of flood waters from reservoirs in neighbouring Maharashtra.

The floods threw life out of gear in several districts of Karnataka where the rains have been unevenly spread leaving several other regions devoid of any showers in the ongoing monsoon season.

Yediyurappa said that all flood relief teams were in place and were working overtime to help people in these parts. The chief minister also wrote a letter to his counterpart in Maharashtra, Devendra Fadnavis, asking the latter to regulate the discharge of flood water as it was causing damage to human and animal life in Karnataka.

In his letter on Monday, Yediyurappa said that the Maharashtra has been releasing huge quantity of flood waters from the Koyna reservoir and that the outflow has been increased from around 20,000 cusecs to 1.25 lakh cusecs in a span of two days.

“Due to the heavy discharge from Maharashtra reservoir to northern Karnataka, districts like Belagavi, Vijayapura, Raichur, Kalburgi and Yadgir are severely affected by the flood discharge in the Krishna river and the situation is severely alarming. The heavy flood discharge from Maharashtra is affecting human and livestock of these districts very badly,” Yediyurappa said in his letter to the Maharashtra chief minister.

Yediyurappa has also said that he would call for a meeting of legislators from these parts and extend all possible help to mitigate the crisis that has befallen the state after months of political uncertainty. Yediyurappa is yet to constitute his council of ministers--a process that may take longer than expected considering the political developments on Monday that saw not just the special status (Article 370) of conflict torn Jammu and Kashmir revoked but also bifurcated the state.

Yediyurappa is scheduled to leave for Delhi to meet senior leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to discuss cabinet expansion and the floods among other things.

Yediyurappa also wrote to his counterpart in Telangana informing the latter that as a consequence of Maharashtra releasing more water, Karnataka would also have to do the same from its dams to mitigate the problems. Yediyurappa asked Telangana to take all precautionary steps in his state as a result.

Meanwhile, Karnataka chief minister held a cabinet meeting on Monday which decided to bring out an ordinance to increase the contingency fund from ₹80 crore to ₹2200 crore in order to facilitate the release of ₹2,000 to the farmers of the State under first instalment under Prime Minister’s Krishi Samman Yojana.

Yediyurappa had announced that his government would give an additional ₹4,000 crore to the PMKSY to give some respite to the farmers of the state who have suffered consecutive droughts, plummeting prices of produce and piling debt burden.