Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
Ms. Pramila Mallik, as the minister she then was, presided over slow-poisoning of more than a crore of school going kids and expectant mothers of the poor families of Orissa for so many years under the Midday Meal (MDM) scheme and Supplementary Nutrition Program (SNP); but she is safe in her cocoon after resigning the post.
Shadow supremo of ruling BJD, Pyari Mohan Mohapatra along with the fellows more loyal to him than to any in the party is projecting her as a heroine who resigned on conscience ground even though the State Vigilance Police has given her a clean chit in the Dal scam unveiled.
Earlier in these pages we have shown how the dal was harmful and how the beneficiaries were thereby slow-poisoned. To our satisfaction, only after we raised this point, political pandas comprising the Opposition, who had been projecting the irregularities exposed by the vigilance as a financial scam till then, have started catching the point we raised and some of them have gone up to demanding criminal action against the harm caused to human beings.
It is intriguing that Mohapatra is protecting Pramila and projecting her as an epitome of probity when to Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik she is so corrupt that she deserved dismissal from the cabinet, which was managed in the guise of her enforced resignation. But Pramila, immediately after sending her resignation to the CM, has put on records before the media that she shall avenge her insult and expose the hidden villain(s) in course of time as, being only 48, she has a long political future that she must protect.
If she really exposes the villain(s), that would be good for the State. We shall wait for that.
But Orissa must not wait to know as to whether or not her vigilance police is corrupt.
The so-called clean chit given to Pramila by the vigilance police is questionable inasmuch as her honesty, if any, has not been shown as measured by the investigators on the matrix of wealth she has amassed in course of her career as the minister in charge of the department involved with the scam.
Before giving her the clean chit, the vigilance must have assessed her property to come to the decision that she is honest. Hence, it is necessary that the vigilance police must now reveal as to how much property she owns.
If the vigilance fails to reveal this immediately, it will be clear that the so-called clean chit is cultivated by political misuse of the vigilance police.