Coonoor (Tamil Nadu), Sep 15 - The 116th annual conference of coffee, tea, spices and rubber planters here Tuesday got short shrift when chief guest Union Labour and Employment Minister Mallikarjun Kharge failed to turn up, disappointing the participants.

'The minister could not come as his flight from Bangalore to Coimbatore (about 75 km from here) got delayed by over two hours,' a senior official of the sector's trade body United Planters' of Southern India (UPASI) told IANS here.

Though Kharge was at the Bangalore airport on time, he could not board the Coimbatore flight as the aircraft, arriving from Kochi, was two hours behind schedule.

Earlier, the unofficial reason given for Kharge's absence was that he had gone to Mysore with Congress president Sonia Gandhi, who inaugurated the second unit of global education centre of IT bellwether Infosys Technologies Ltd at its campus outside the city.

The absence of Kharge, who hails from the coffee-growing state of Karnataka, and is a first time union minister, was a dampener as the organisers (UPASI) had to scout for a chief guest in short time.