Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
Interpol Vice-President and former Director of CBI Sri Uma Shankar Mishra, confronted by TV channel Focus Odisha with breaking observations of ORISSA MATTERS on his link with the daily Suryaprava founded by Chit Fund beneficiary Bikash Swain, has, perhaps inadvertently, divulged how the KIIT boss Achyut Samant was also a factor behind his joining that paper. Samant has termed it unfortunate as Mishra was, according to him, not expected to name him when he had not even any remote relationship with Swain and/or Suryaprava. A small paper under his shadow ownership has carried his statement. But, in-depth investigation by experienced sleuths is needed to find out the hidden truth behind Mishra’s link with Suryaprava even in its pre-natal stage and whether or not Samant tells the truth in this context.
However, when preferential land allocation, encroachment regularization and naked encroachment by natural persons, legal persons and ghosts in and around the capital city of Bhubaneswar has become so menacingly monstrous under chief minister Naveen Patnaik that scores of acres of land are shown untraceable in official records, it is time to make Samant answerable to the society in issues relating to such offenses.
Samant is an old offender in land-grabbing and cheating. But he is yet to be punished, because, some dishonest media persons have fortified him with protective layers that they have created around him and because of his clout with Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik that he solidified by patronizing the farce of Kalinga prize in KIIT campus.
Either real or ghost doctoral degrees from manipulated or manufactured-in-paper universities have dazzled the crime-detectors of Orissa Government to such blinding effect that government cases against him have not been pursued by the government officials/prosecutors in right earnest.
Willingness of certain journalists and media houses to prostitute themselves for fellows like Samant has helped him build up the empire of land-looting and cheating without any care for the law. Around nine years ago, in second part of April 2005, I had exposed his misdeeds in the context of prostitution of the newspaper ‘Samaja’ under editorship of Ms. Manorama Mohapatra, in my column ‘Dura Adura’. It is published in my book of the same name spanning from page 82 to 86. Oriya knowing and Oriya speaking visitors to this site may peruse the same at the bottom of this posting.
In the concerned episode, Samant had attracted my attention through a headline that had castigated the people of Orissa as a mass suffering inferiority complex, because the people of Orissa were critical of the conduct of Samant. Shocked to the core over the filthy attack on people of Orissa by the Samaja of Gopabandhu Das at the behest of a Kera Bengali, I decided to look into the matter. And, I found, Samant had built up his castle with the help of the police under control of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, his ministerial colleague Bishwabhusan Harichandan and union minister Murali Manohar Joshi of BJP, over and above prostituting media houses like the Samaja.
In market design of rabid rightists education being a commercial commodity, techno-education traders had acquired eligibility for industrial plots under IDCO dispensation of which Samant had taken advantage.
It transpired from industry minister Bishwabhusan Harichandan’s reply to a question from Lalatendu Bidyadhar Mohapatra in the Assembly on March 9 that Samant’s institute had already bagged 31.149 acres of land from IDCO in the name of hostel for engineering students, 700-bedded hospital, school and other professional institutes which was not utilized as per terms and conditions; and yet he had encroached a vast area of 9.733 acres behind back of the authorities. Against this encroachment, government had filed one FIR in Chandra Sekhar Pur Police Station, Bhubaneswar. By the date of my report no other action had been taken. Why the Chandra Sekhar Pur police station did not act upon the Government FIR and what role Bishwabhusan had played in inaction of police on the FIR is yet a fit case for investigation by the CBI.
The same Bishwabhusan had told the Assembly on March 2 in reply to MLA Ananta Prasad Sethi that, Samant’s organisation had taken huge sums of money phase after phase in the name of S.C. and S.T. students and had misused the same funds. The fraud having come to records on spot inspection by the departmental director, the central government was moved not to supply further funds to the organization and to take steps for recovery of the huge funds already given. But, with Naveen Patnaik as Chief Minister, the official steps were stymied, never to start again.
According to a confidential communication preferred by the Director of Technical Education to the Secretary of Panchayatiraj department on 11.9.2001, Samant’s KIIT had swindled scores of lakhs of rupees taken from the Trisem funds in between March 1994 and December 1995 and resorted to forgery and cheating to cover up the offense.
Yet, with Murali Manohar Joshi of BJP as union minister for Human resources Development, KIIT was accorded with University status in blatant disregard to the most eligible and competent claim of the Ravenshaw College of Cuttack, since which day, the land-grabber has not looked behind.
Like the Samaja of March 31, 2005, many newspapers of Orissa are yet prostituting for Samant in mad rush for money.
But to go to the root of his offenses for salvaging Orissa from mafia raj in education as well as for bringing in end to loot of land and public exchequer, investigation is needed into conduct of C.S.Pur Police, the daily Samaja, Bishwabhusan Harichandan and Murali Manohar Joshi in matter of the abandoned actions against Achyut Samant and/or KIIT.
My article mentioned supra that had exposed the foul play is reproduced below for perusal by whosoever wants to reach the root. Study it and make up your mind to force an investigation into the malpractices unveiled therein, so that motherland Orissa may be saved from the climate of embezzlement and land loot.
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