Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
This year’s Maharshi Badrayan Vyas Samman for Classical Oriya has gone to Subrat Kumar Prusty, who has stolen the State’s researched document for Classical Status to Oriya Language! What a great farce! And what a great fraud played upon the Presidential Award of Certificate of Honors!
Government of India has been totally misled with wrong information on Subrat Kumar Prusty through a corrupt bureaucracy of Orissa that is well aware of his serious misconduct.
In Letter No.364 dt.14.7.2017, the Odia Bhasha Pratisthan, Government of Orissa’s Institute of Language, has informed that the Government of Orissa have been given a report on this theft with a request for suitable action. On the other hand, Letter No. 23571(e) dated 21.8.2019 of the Chief Secretary’s office reveals that the matter of theft of the Official Classical Odia Document by Subrat Kumar Prusty and his gang is pending with the Secretary, Odia Language, Literature and Culture Department since 26.10.2017 awaiting action to blacklist Dr. Debi Prasanna Pattanayak, Subrat Kumar Prusty and others for the offence of stealing the official document and publishing the same through a private publishing house creating a rival copyright on the same and equal material.
This vital fact has been suppressed by Orissa State Government while recommending his name, even when the HE, MHRD instructions in File No.11-1/2019-Skt.II sent to the Chief Secretary, Orissa, among others, it was made unambiguously clear that, while making the recommendations, the State Governments should “carefully” assess the particulars of the individuals, if needed, with the help of “an expert committee” to be “set up for the purpose”.
Subrat Kumar Prusty, a protégé of Dr. Debi Prasanna Pattanayak , as the records show, had, through him, entered into the drafting committee of the Classical Oriya project of the Bhasha Pratisthan, Govt. of Orissa , and had received remuneration for his labor along with others of the Committee and in the guise of proofreading on the desktop of the printer, had stolen the entire document from the desktop, according to recorded version of the printer and had published the same through a private publishing foundation called KIS Foundation.
It is shocking that, such a person, known to the Chief Secretary, to the Secretary of the department of Language, to the Director of the State Institute of Language, and, on the basis of serial exposure of this crime in one of the State’s popular daily for months, to the whole gamut of Orissa’s intelligentsia for stealing of the State’s copy-righted document on Classical Odia, has bagged the Maharshi Badrayan Vyas Samman, 2019 in the field of Classical Odia on the basis of the State’s recommendation! One wonders, how has he been recommended as a man of good moral character!
Item No.8 of the instruction in HE (MHRD) File No.11-1/2019-Skt. II makes it a must for the recommending authority to send the “Character and Antecedent Certificate” in the enclosed proforma that requires the recommending authority to declare on the basis of his years long personal acquaintance with the recommended scholar that he is of proven good moral character, having no criminal antecedents.
When the above cited official communications on theft of the official document on Classical Odia, prima facie shows that, Subbrat Kumar Prusty is not a man of good moral character, the Summon from the S.D.J.M. , Bhubaneswar proves that a criminal case bearing No. I.C.C.No. 4658/17 is pending against him since 2017. In fact, in this criminal case he has appeared and prayed for appearance through a lawyer.
Thus, the declaration by the recommending authority that he has “no case pending against him in any Court of Law and that he has never been prosecuted” is a blatant lie, false and contrary to the actual, and designed to bag for him the Award by misleading the HE Department of MHRD as well as the President of India.
Moreover, when item No.7 in the above noted instruction, covering particularly the nominations for Maharshi Badrayan Vyas Samman stresses upon “breakthrough in inter-disciplinary studies involving contribution of Sanskrit or ancient Indian wisdom to the process of synergy between modernity and tradition”, in Prusty’s case, we are yet to find any such breakthrough.
In view of these facts,immediate steps should be taken to nullify the award of Maharshi Badrayan Vyas Samman, 2019 announced in favor of Subrat Kumar Prusty and to take steps as deemed proper against the person/authority, who has misled the MHRD with a false and fabricated Certificate of character and antecedent by suppressing vital facts to ensure the Award to a wrong fellow.