How now is Orissa? Eminent journalist Sandeep Sahu gives an inkling

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

What affects Orissa the most at the moment is: Rise of the Chief Minister’s private secretary V K Pandian as the super Chief Minister.

As far back as in 2013 I had exposed how he was emerging as an extraconstitutional ganglion in the Office of the Chief Minister in my report captioned ‘Super CM in Orissa CMO! the CM may please note‘.

Orissa, by then, had become so inane under Naveen’s dispensation that neither her people, nor her people’s representatives nor the news media organisations could think about how devastative that would be, unless the hyper shrewd PS is put on leash.

The shrewd PS gained over Sambad Editor Soumyaranjan Patnaik to establish himself as a person more powerful than the Chief Secretary, who heads the Executive Government.

‘Odisha Power List – 2016’, was a mischief deliberately designed to project Pandian as the most powerful person in Orissa. That he was the most powerful person next only to the Chief Minister of Orissa Naveen Patnaik and Central Minister Dharmendra Pradhan, was shown in the survey also a part of this design. By keeping Soumyaranjan Patnaik below Pandian in this list, the Kanak News team intelligently added credibility to this contrived game. And, then they, through their English organ ‘Odisha Sun Times’ imposed Pandian on the psyche of the members of BJD as the man on whom their political fate depends. In my editorial dated May 6, 2016 I had portended an anarchy in administration, if this design is not defeated. No one had bothered to pay any heed.

The same Soumyaranjan Patnaik and the same V.K.Pandian are at loggerheads now. EOW of the Crime Branch of Orissa Police has played havoc with the former’s media empire and Pandian has occupied the central position of the controversy, with sycophants projecting him as the future CM.

Anybody who stands for the State is now vulnerable to vagaries

So, how now is Orissa?

Eminent journalist Sandeep Sahu, in his Facebook wall, on September 21, has given a note that helps us have an inkling on what is happening in Orissa. He has said:

“I must admit I apprehend, for the very first time in my life, that the dirty tricks department of the ruling dispensation could be up to some mischief. I have never done anything illegal or have any skeletons in my cupboard. But the events of the last few weeks and months suggest that you don’t have to be in the wrong to be put in the dock. You can always be framed in a false case, ‘evidence’ can be cooked up by the agencies that work as the ‘greyhounds’ of the authoritarian government and you can be put behind bars for a crime that you haven’t done. Alternatively, the ‘unofficial’ hounds can be activated and the troll army let loose on social media to launch and run a vicious , below-the-belt vilification/character assassination campaign against you to force you to back off and fall at the feet of their masters.”