BHADRACHALAM: It was a chance encounter with Congress president Sonia Gandhi for a hut-dweller in Mote village on Wednesday.

Ms. Gandhi, who had a brief interaction with flood-affected persons at the relief camp in the village, made a surprise visit to a house to get a first hand information on the condition of people living there.

But she found the doors locked as the inmates were away at a relief camp.

On her way back from the village, she visited a hut-dweller Talluri Sitamma and enquired with her about the help being extended by the relief machinery.

The woman pleaded for a permanent shelter free from the inundation problem.

Help for three kids

Another woman Lakkumalla Annapuram approached Ms. Gandhi for help to restore vision for her two blind children --- Mangatayaru, 12, and Sriram, 8. Visibly moved with the plight of the two children, who were also present in the enclosure in front of her, she referred the matter to an official accompanying her.

In a similar gesture, Ms. Gandhi wanted the official to help Peddini Kalyan, a boy left crippled by polio, for surgery.

Ms. Gandhi was drenched as it was raining when she arrived in Mote village.

Party workers reached her promptly with umbrellas.

Ms. Gandhi took stock of the situation in Khammam district by undertaking an aerial survey of the areas inundated by the Godavari. Accompanied by Chief Minister Y. S. Rajasekhara Reddy and Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil, she also visited two relief camps where she gave a patient hearing to the victims. She spent five minutes with the victims at the relief camp opened in the Government junior college. Women from the 246 families accommodated in the camp made frantic efforts to submit memoranda to her but only a few could approach her. They wanted the flood bank around Bhadrachalam to be extended to Subashnagar and other new localities.

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