HYDERABAD: An emergency meeting of the Tungabhadra Board is being convened at Bangalore on September 11 on request by Andhra Pradesh to resolve the issue of unhindered tapping of the High and Low level canals by Karnataka farmers. The State's contention is that this illegal drawing is affecting inflows to Anantapur, Kurnool and Kadapa districts.

The drawing of water by Karnataka farmers from these canals of the Tungabhadra dam at Hospet, has reportedly reached an alarming level. As a result, fights between the Karnataka and Andhra farmers have become a daily occurrence at borders or at the 118 off-take points of the canals.

A surprise finding by Andhra engineers during field inspections recently was that Karnataka politicians and MLAs are taking active role in tapping by supervising unauthorised opening of the sluices or breaching of the bunds.

Consequently, any number of requests by the Andhra Pradesh Government to Karnataka Chief Secretary B. K. Das and the Bellary district Collector were ineffective. As political leaders were involved, the local police could do precious little. The situation was such that the flow in HLC was hardly 300 cusecs on Saturday as against the normal of 600 cusecs and that in LLC 1,700 cusecs (2,000 cusecs).

Noting that Andhra Pradesh canals are not getting their entitlement from the dam, TB Board Chairman and Central Water Commission Chief Engineer (Hyderabad) V. K. Jyothi called for the emergency meeting.

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