Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
Orissa is severely afflicted with a pandemic politico-administrative disease called Pandian. Under this disease cabinet ministers of Orissa have lost their sovereign vigour and the ruling party MLAs and MPs have allowed themselves to bear with the ignominy of women folks including their own dancing on the streets in offering welcome to Pandian wherever he goes!
Pusillanimity has such overwhelming effect that, the chief of the executive government of Orissa – the Chief Secretary – takes, de facto, orders from Pandian and the entire administrative machinery throughout the State dances to his tune. The Chief Minister acts like fantoccini in his hands and reads out his review observation from tiny pieces of paper suspectedly given to him by Pandian, without reviewing any proceed of administration in review meetings he statutorily takes up.
The State exchequer is denuded of hundreds of crores of rupees to defray the cost of his air-tours as the head of an illegal and unanswerable outfit styled 5T. There is no trace of this all-powerful outfit in the Orissa Government Rules of Business created and promulgated by the State Governor under Art.166 of the Constitution of India. But this outfit is called a department with Pandian as its Secretary. Thus, this outfit is entirely unconstitutional and blatantly illegal. Yet, many thousand crore of rupees are allegedly squandered away in the so-called 5T projects designed to give a cover to loot of the State exchequer, the way Pandian prefers.
It is Pandian, a mere employee of the State, who enjoys the rarest of rare privileges of being greeted with flying kisses from chief minister Naveen Patnaik even on the podiums of public meetings. If there is any abnormal angle in such shameless flying kisses, even the Opposition has never demanded for a study on it. The Chief Minister’s passive partnership in his power-bed has so overwhelmingly affected the psyche of the BJD rank and file. that, Debi Prasad Mishra, former Minister and senior leader of the ruling party has shown no hesitation in addressing Pandian as the Chief Minister of Orissa, in a public meeting in his own constituency, even when Naveen Patnaik is to seek fresh mandate as the Chief Minister.
Clearly, Pandian, a mere salaried servant of the people, is now the most powerful boss of the State.
Orissa has succumbed to the design he devised in 2016. He gained over Soumya Ranjan Patnaik, chief of the major media organisation namely the Eastern Media Ltd. and used him to be planted in the mind of the people of Orissa as the most powerful person in the government. Huge money was involved. Soumya Ranjan Patnaik got his palms fabulously greased by Pandian and used his Kanak Tv to project him as the most powerful person in the ruling setup in Orissa, next only to the Chief Minister. In Soumya’s Sun Times, it was even disclosed that Pandian also manages the BJD, calculatedly tailored to convey the BJD rank and file to accept Pandian as their 2nd boss. The entire design was styled “Odisha Power List 2016”. Thereafter, every member of BJD as well as bureaucracy started competing with each other in expressing loyalty to Pandian.
This was a deliberate design of Pandian executed by the avaricious owner of the media organization. Neither the Eastern Media nor the Kanak Tv had attempted to create an “Odisha Power List” earlier to 2016 to show that it has a history of creating such a list. It has never bothered to create such a “list” after 2016 also. Hence it is clear that “Odisha Power List 2016” had the single purpose of projecting Pandian as the 2nd highest boss of the power circle that rules over Orissa.
In the nefarious footprint of Naveen
This nefarious design was devised exactly as the them media major ETv was used by Naveen Patnaik to bag an unprecedented tag “Priya Odia” in 2006 when his credibility as the Chief Minister had declined to the lowest level and founding members of BJD had started revolting against him. To my sources, ETv was paid a hundred crore of rupees to cultivate the Priya (most popular) Odia title for him when he had become utmost Apriya (most unpopular) in reality. In the drama ETv had enacted, Naveen was pitted against a four-year old boy namely Buddhia Singh, living in a Bhubaneswar slum with his mother, in the final round of a stage-managed election through mobile phone, when uneducated slumdweller kid, who had never used a mobile phone in life, had no knowledge of such a contest against the Chief Minister of the State.
There was a hidden fear in the mind of Naveen Patnaik that if Buddhia Singh anyway gets the idea any day and challenges the so-called “election” in a legal forum, the fraud he had played would be bare before the public. Hence his child welfare minister Pramila Mallik was used to demolish the boy, holding his marathon running as an attempt to commit suicide and was completely ruined by force-placing him in the State-run Sports Hostel with a farcical declaration to train him in the sports hostel to be an Olympian!
Buddhia Singh is no more on the scene, but the “Priya Odia” title Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik bagged by defeating this four-years-old illiterate slum-dwelling boy in a popularity contest through mobile phone, has helped Naveen to stay in power, despite all his marked anti-people activities.
This experimentation of Naveen Patnaik on use of ETv to emerge as the most popular amongst the people of Orissa despite being most unpopular, has been used by Pandian to emerge as the most powerful boss of the ruling BJD by using Soumya Ranjan Patnaik and his Kanak Tv, to such extent that its senior Vice-President Devi Prasad Mishra has already projected him as the Chief Minister, notwithstanding Naveen’s incumbency in the post!
The way Orissa has been rushing into ruins since the day Pandian was projected in the so-called Odisha Power List 2016 as the de facto boss of BJD, it would be very difficult for any conscious Oriya to pardon Soumya Ranjan Patnaik for having promoted this pandemic that is eating away every iota of political mana of the people of Orissa.
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