New Delhi, July 21: Journalists invited to dinner at Union minister K. Chandrashekhar Rao’s house stormed out last night after being held captive in a room for 45 minutes.

The angry scribes also skipped the lavish spread at what turned out to be an invitation to insult.

It appeared that Rao, who has been spearheading the fight for a separate Telengana state and is very sensitive about what appears about it in the media, especially the Telugu press, came round to thinking it was unwise to let journalists interact freely with leading lights of the United Progressive Alliance.

Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, Congress chief Sonia Gandhi and several senior cabinet ministers had turned up for the dinner, and clearly the Telengana Rashtra Samiti chief did not want them mixing with the scribes who might have quizzed them about the “emotive” statehood issue.

As a result, the 20-odd scribes who had been issued invitations to Rao’s housewarming party at his 23, Tughlak Road residence were held captive in another room by Special Protection Group personnel acting “under orders” until the VVIPs had dined.

Some senior reporters said they had not experienced anything so humiliating in their careers. “We did not go there to eat. We thought we might get some news since Sonia Gandhi and the PM were all coming,” one journalist said.

Rao, who relinquished the shipping ministry to allow Sonia to pacify the DMK which had been eyeing the portfolio, has since been a minister without portfolio. Members of his party tried to shift the blame onto the SPG saying overzealous security personnel did not want the journalists interacting with Sonia and Singh. But this explanation did not cut any ice as the SPG had been given a list of the invited journalists and cameramen in advance.