DAVANAGERE: It is said that rains in the peninsula are erratic, so was the behaviour of Agriculture Minister N S Shivashankar Reddy on Monday during his visit to Davanagere district.
Officials who turned up at 2.30 pm, the scheduled time, for a review meeting with the minister at the zilla panchayat, were made to wait till 4.00 pm, which upset their programmes for the day. After officials of the department had gone that extra mile to fill a pond in Echaghatta village to impress the minister, his coming late left them “feeling unrewarded”.
The grassroot officials of the agricultural department who visited the village early in the morning got the farm pond filled with borewell water. The farm ponds were provided to farmers across the state to ensure that more rainwater is stored and the groundwater gets recharged. Reddy later perform puja of the same water.