Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
People of Cuttack, the native city of Orissa’s most senior daily broadsheet, The Samaja, which by default belongs to the ownership of the people of Orissa, in a mass meeting on August 4, have resolved to save their beloved paper from the death bed to which villainy of the Servants of the People Society (SoPS) has thrown it through corrupt methods.
We, in orissamatters.com, have been trying since many days to bring the mischief to public attention.
The SoPS is suspected to have usurped The Samaja by tricks after its founder Pt. Gopabandhu Das – then a star member of the said society – passed away on 17 June 1928.
And, as some of the influential luminaries of the then Orissa were part of this trick, the bereaved family of Pt. Das as well as the people of Orissa, then under the grip of extreme grief over the unbearable demise of their beloved leader, could not grasp the suspected mischief of the usurpers.
And, the post Gopabandhu editors of The Samaja and the Oriyas in SoPS did not share the truth, if any they knew, with the people, for the reasons best known to themselves.
Thus, the SoPS has been able to keep the paper under its iron control and using its entire income according to its vested interest members’ motives and preferences.
In the process, internecine rivalry among the members and office bearers of SoPS has turned so acrimonious that, like vultures attack each other over sharing a carcass, they are attacking each other and their putrefying quarrels are making commotions in courts and police stations.
In the hands of SoPS. The Samaja of the people of Orissa is dying a slow death.
At, this juncture, therefore, the Cuttack mass meeting to save The Samaja is certainly a very welcome development.
Held under the chairmanship of former Vice-Chancellor Dr. Sk. Kamruddin Khan, the meeting was addressed by the President of Cuttack Surksha Committee Saroj Kumar Singh, Pradip Pradhan, Pramod Rautray, Parbati Das, Dipak Banarjee, Bijay Chakravarty, Nakula Raut, Bainshidhar Nayak, Sarat Sahu, Udayanath Prusti, Sukanti Mohanty and others, who vowed to stop SoPS swindling further funds of The Samaja, which entirely belongs to the people of Orissa. Mahanagara Ekata Committee, Baliyatra Vyabasayi Sangha, Chetana Chakra, Bharata Vikash Sangam, Nababarsha Mahotsav Committee, C.E.C.P., Mahidas Bazar Yuvak Sangha, Nikhila Utkala Barika Sangha, Cuttack Zilla Akhada Sangha and various Puja Committees of Cuttack took the vow too.
Pingback: The Samaja in Death Bed: Servants of the People Society Seems to have Occupied it on the Basis of a Fake Will « Orissa Matters