The picture which shook MP State Congress Party

This picture taken by me on 9th April 2002, took the then ruling Congress party by storm and gave the much needed imputes to the main opposition in the state of Madhya Pradesh the Bharatiya Janata Party. Government School children from various poverty and drought struck villages from Madhya Pradesh State had been sitting right from 9 in the morning on the street leading to the Chief Minister Raja Digvijay Singh’s official residence in Bhopal.
Since I had gone there to cover the protest by the children sitting on the pavements in the noon, I asked a couple of policemen standing on guard if the Chief Minister had gone home for his lunch and afternoon siesta, they replied that he has left his office and was heading home. So even I waited for the Chief Minister, thinking that he would meet these children on his way home.
The motorcade of the Chief Minister Digvijay Singh came first ringing the shrieking siren that the Raja is following them shortly. I got ready with a wide angle lens and saw the Raja’s car approach the squatting children, so I quickly took some three frames, while the most of the fotog’s present there ran behind his car thinking he would stop and step out. But instead the car kept going and in a flash he had entered his home gates which were quickly shut behind him by the alert cops on duty. The whole number of fotog’s had missed a good picture. This same picture was xeroxed the next day by the BJP youth wing as they protested the apathy shown by Raja Digvijay Singh on these starving children, who had braved the summer heat waiting for him to hear their pleas.

The Caption: Chief Minister Digvijay Singh seeing, from his car, a sit-in by school children from various villages on Tuesday demanding that the State Government implement the free mid-day meal scheme ordered by the Supreme Court.