A fleet of helicopters plucking people from rooftops and dropping relief supplies filled the skyline as waters overflowing from the nearby Ukai dam surged into the city of 3.5 million people, witnesses said.

National broadcaster Doordarshan said 90 percent of the city in western Gujarat state -- that accounts for 70 percent of India's polished diamond exports and boasts top textile houses -- was already under water.

"We are losing count of sorties or tonnage of relief sent as we are throwing in every aircaft that we are getting," air force spokesman Wing Commander Tarun Singha said from the city of Bhavnagar, across the Gulf of Khambhat from coastal Surat, from where the rescue is being coordinated.

"In fact, the entire armed forces is now in action out there," Singha told AFP as Gujarat authorities sought 20 billion rupees (444 million dollars) in emergency federal government handouts.

Gujarat Revenue Minister Kaushik Patel said 10 million people were "seriously affected" by floods in the rain-soaked state and more than 5,200 Surat residents have been saved from imminent death, the Press Trust of India news agency reported.

Hundreds of thousands of residents managed to move out under their own steam from Surat before it was cut off from the rest of Gujarat, where floods have shut down gas extraction since Tuesday.

Some 500 swimmers have been sent to Surat to back soldiers in powerboats darting across roads that have turned into waterways to deliver supplies to people marooned in homes and buildings.

"It's a very grave situation," Patel said after floodwaters left millions in the state stranded on the roofs of homes, hotels, police stations and submerged barns.

"We don't have any food or drinking water. Can you ask someone to help," the Indian Express daily quoted university Vice Chancellor R.G. Kothari as pleading in his last words from Surat before communications collapsed Wednesday.

"Papa, help... water is gushing into our house," read a desperate SMS of a Surat schoolgirl identified by a television scroll only as Rumni, as a team of 1,000 doctors waited to enter the city.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh postponed a scheduled visit to Surat by one day to avoid disrupting the huge relief operation, officials said.

According to Nanubhai Vasani, ex-chief of the Gujarat Diamond Association, the industry was daily losing 1.3 billion rupees as most diamond merchants were perched atop their homes and their premises submerged by swirling floodwaters.

In adjoining Mahrashtra state, more than 350,000 people had been evacuated from 15 of its 35 districts and thousands of others were living off food dropped by the air force, officials said.

The military was also out in southern Andhra Pradesh state, where 900,000 acres (364,217 hectares) of crops and 71,000 houses are under floodwater in six districts, an official said.

The national flood-related death toll has risen by 197 in the past eight days to 574 since the monsoon hit the country in mid-May, according to an AFP count as of Wednesday.

The metereological department, however, had some words of cheer.

"The situation is expected to improve at least in the Gujarat and Maharashtra regions following a reduction in rainfall," department chief B. Lal said. But he predicted possible heavy showers in the eastern state of Orissa later in the week.

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