Raipur, Nov. 1 :    Raipur, Nov. 1:  It was a special occasion. First, the acting chief justice of Chhattisgarh, Ramesh Saran Garg, administered the oath of office to Dinesh Nandan Sahay, the Governor of the new state who, in turn, read out the oath for new chief minister Ajit Jogi. Hours later, Jogi left for Bilaspur to attend the swearing-in of the new chief justice. But hectic behind-the-scenes activities marked Jogi's appointment at the stroke of midnight, when he became the chief minister of the republic's 26th state. The first challenge came from the Naxalites who rejected the creation of the new state and called for a bandh asking their rank and file to intensify their class struggle. Then, a section of Jogi's own partymen boycotted the swearing-in ceremony, plotting how to topple the new government. Some Sangh parivar outfits read a deeper conspiracy behind Jogi's appointment. Voicing concern at the installation of a 'Christian' chief minister in a tribal-dominated region, they expressed fear it might lead to a spurt in conversions. Inside the police parade ground, the site of the swearing-in, there were as many voices as the number of people. When Jogi raised the slogan of Jai Chhattisgarh, supporters of Vidya Charan Shukla, who lost out in the race, remarked 'Outsider nahin chalega.' The top state BJP leadership gave him a maximum of six months. 'We will not do anything. Everything will happen from within the Congress,' a BJP functionary said. Many Congress leaders were also seen going around with long faces. It was left to AICC general secretary Ghulam Nabi Azad to lighten the mood. 'When we finalised the CLP leader's name in the forenoon we thought our task was over. We were planning to watch Mission Kashmir till we realised we had a more important task - Mission Chhattisgarh,' he quipped. Azad tried to play down yesterday's violence claiming that it was nothing compared to what takes place in Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and Andhra Pradesh. 'In Andhra recently, when it became a free-for-all, an MLA came out of the Assembly only to realise that his dhoti was missing,' he said. Azad's remarks notwithstanding, for Jogi, an engineer-turned-IAS officer-turned-politician, the task of running the state is not going to be easy. With its rich mineral reserves and forest wealth, less than 20 per cent of Chhattisgarh's area is irrigated, exposing it to frequent droughts. Though the region's annual rainfall is 1,200 mm above Haryana and Punjab, more than 50 per cent landless labourers and farmers reportedly migrated to greener pastures last year. Since Chhattisgarh yields only one crop a year, Jogi says his top priority will be to improve irrigation and agricultural facilities, apart from road development and rural electrification. The state's abject poverty has also given rise to the Naxalite menace. Eleven of the 16 districts have strong Naxalite presence with the ultras already demanding autonomy for the Bastar region. While governance is sure to keep the chief minister busy, politics is likely to cast its shadow on development work. There are 13 MLAs who were ministers in the Digvijay Singh government before the redrawing of the map. Jogi also has to satisfy regional satraps like Shukla, Digvijay, Kamal Nath, Arjun Singh and Madhavrao Scindia, who have reluctantly accepted him as 'madam's choice'. It all depends upon how Jogi treats their supporters and sympathisers in terms of giving them 'wet portfolios' and key assignments. For the 1970-batch IAS officer, there is another problem. Many of his batch-mates will be serving under him as commissioners or directors or secretaries.As one member of his peer group remarked last night: 'Are yaar, ab Ajit hamara sir ho gaya.'