Lalit Shastri Speaks Up: When Chattisgarh was formed, Ajit Jogi was elected as the Congress Legislature Party leader and so he became the first Chief Minister of the new State carved out of Madhya Pradesh. Immediately after the Congress Legislature Party election at the Raipur Circuit House, Congress observers Prabha Rao and Ghulam Nabi Azad, both AICC general secretaries, along with MP Chief Minister Digvijay Singh drove to the farmhouse of another Congress senior Vidya Charan Shukla to placate him as he was also in the race for the CM's post. As Bureau Chief of The Hindu, I could smell the possibility of high intensity drama at Vidya Charan'e place and hence had taken position right there. When the Congress leaders' car entered the sprawling property and stopped at the main entrance, a huge mob of VC suporters swooped on it. I was an eyewitness to what followed. They pounced upon the Congress leaders as they came out and.gave a thrashing to Ghulam Nabi Azad and also Digvijay Singh, whom everybody calls Diggi Raja. After the situation had normalized and there was general calm, a number of journalists and TV reporters descended at VC's place. When a journalist asked Digvijay Singh whether or not there was any violence, he replied in the negative. At that moment, I was standing just besides Digvijay Singh. Pointing to the torn side pocket of his kurta, I had asked him, "how did this happen"? And he had responded by saying "oh, it got stuck in the latch when I was entering this place."

Later, when a TV reporter took my bite, I had summed it up in a single sentence by observing: " Aaj to Ghulam our Raja dono pite"  (the slave and the king both got roughed up today).