Ballari: Chief Minister Siddaramaiah was spared the worst of the drought as officials made sure he did not visit the rain-fed areas of the western taluks of Ballari district that are reeling under it and was taken instead to villages in Kurugodu and Siruguppa where farmers have managed to harvest one crop of paddy using water from the Tungabhadra river instead of their usual two.
The authorities also made sure that the water tanks in Kurugodu and Sindhigeri in Siruguppa on the banks of river Tungabhadra ,were full when he arrived, by pumping in water from a river canal through an additional pipeline.
Seeing little to worry him, the Chief Minister finished his 'drought tour' in the district where the mercury level has been hovering around 43 degree Celsius for the last fortnight, in one and a half hours.
Besides the two tanks, he visited an MNERGA work site and a school, but gave the severely drought-hit areas of Kudligi, Hagaribommanahalli and Hadagali taluks in the district a miss.
All he did was spend a few minutes with villagers employed under MNERGA in Shanwaspura village, and taste the mid-day meal prepared for children of a government primary school in Bailur village.
But people of the village gave the game away when they tried to gherao local Bharatiya Janata Party MLA, T H Suresh Babu, protesting that when they had to go without water most days, it had been released only on the day of the Chief Minister's visit,to pull wool over his eyes.
