Anil Kapoor sweats for a bit - and then, out of sheer helplessness, picks up the gauntlet. For 24 hours, he will play chief minister. All Amrish Puri has to do is give the governor two letters, the first is his resignation, the second a letter naming Anil Kapoor as his successor as leader of the largest party in the Assembly.

Amrish Puri tells his party colleagues that it takes months to understand the ramifications of administration - there is no way anyone can make a difference in just one day. has other ideas. Acting from the gut level instinct that characterises the common man, he targets corruption. Every pending file of corruption case involving public servants is called for -- and sight unseen, Anil Kapoor orders that every official with a case pending against his name be forthwith suspended. Then he goes to the public, via a hotline, for an hour.

Citizens call in with problems, he solves them on the spot. Problems of eve-teasing at a local college, and slum dwellers who have been allotted flats but haven't been able to occupy them, are similarly solved with quick strokes of the pen -- and, in the former case, with his fists.

With just one hour to go for his term to expire, Anil Kapoor cuts the ultimate Gordian knot. Why has corruption been allowed to flourish? Because the corrupt are patronised by the ministers. He tells his cops, arrest all ministers. And finally, he lands up with a warrant for Amrish Puri's own arrest. "No can do," the chief minister gloatingly tells him, "to arrest a CM takes an order from the governor." "Can do," Anil Kapoor ripostes, "you forgot that you have resigned as CM, and are now just an ordinary citizen." What follows is a re-election. And a mass clamour for the one-day-CM, as Anil Kapoor becomes known, to take on the job on a permanent basis. Which, in turn, sparks in Amrish Puri and his mates, a desire for revenge. And so the story unfolds to a logical conclusion.

Rani Mukerjee a village-belle is Anil Kapoor's lover.

"I am," says Shankar in unabashed fashion, "a middle-class person. And the movie-maker in me is also a middle class person, with middle-class values. Mine are middle-class movies. Though they talk so much about the huge budgets of my films, the final result is a very middle-class view of the world I am dealing with." Nayak is an example in point. Shankar's movies work because he is dealing with a character he knows best -- himself.

Shankar, has, as always, taken responsibility for story, script and screenplay besides direction. "I like working to my own stories, rather than directing someone else's," says Shankar.