He later did MA in Hindi literature in1986 at Durga Mahavidyalaya, Raipur which is affiliated with Pandit Ravishankar Shukla University.
[3] His discontinued his research on plays of Vishnu Prabhakar due to political agitation during his student days.
He first became an MLA winning the 1998 Madhya Pradesh Legislative Assembly election representing the Bharatiya Janata Party.
He won the 2003 Chhattisgarh Legislative Assembly election defeating Deepa Sahu of the Indian National Congress by a thin margin of 2,709 votes.
Later, he lost the 2008 Assembly election to Lekhram Sahu of Congress but regained the seat and won consecutively three terms in 2013, 2018 and 2023.