Madhu Koda with his family at his old home. Pix: Manik Bose

Ranchi, Aug. 27: About 500m from the hullabaloo of Morabadi grounds — the venue for Shibu Soren’s oath-taking ceremony as the sixth chief minister of Jharkhand — one man was performing a griha pravesh puja.

The man, who till recently had held the seat of power in the state, had only family members and personal secretary Harendra Kumar Singh for company today, but he didn’t seem to mind.

With his three-month-old baby on his lap, outgoing chief minister Madhu Koda looked confident and relaxed. He performed a puja before entering his Deendayal Nagar house, where he lived two years ago as the state mines minister. Chandra Prakash Choudhary, the Ajsu legislator and former drinking water and sanitation minister, arrived at Koda’s new residence at 3pm.

“I have left the chief minister’s residence (in Kanke Road). I am going to hand over the car (a bulletproof white Ambassador) today. Guruji should not face any problem if he plans to shift to the chief minister’s residence at the earliest,” Koda told The Telegraph.

Koda was allotted this house when he was a state minister and never vacated the same after becoming the chief minister. Though the Deendayal Nagar house was converted into a UPA co-ordination committee office, not a single meeting of the body was ever held there. Instead, it became a shelter for some of Koda’s close aides.

Today, they were seen busy transferring their personal belongings — five steel almirahs, a decorated baby cot and a carved wooden chair among others.

“Since morning I was at the chief minister’s residence. I was busy since my belongings had to be shifted. I met people from my constituency area (Jagannathpur in West Singhbhum). My father and mother came here this morning only for this puja,” said Koda. He said rest of his belongings would be shifted by evening.

For the time being, however, there was no time to rest. Koda told the two priests who were performing puja that he would return soon. He had to go to the Morabadi grounds to witness the oath-taking ceremony of Guruji and 11 of his cabinet colleagues.

Koda and Choudhary are not in the new state cabinet. Soren and Forward Bloc MLA Aparna Sengupta are replacing them.