Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
On February 9th, the 16th Orissa Legislative Assembly, that had shown no concern for governance of the State in the State Language, virtually died a premature death, helping Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik escape undiscussed and uncensored for forgery in the amendments of the Orissa Official Language Act, 1954 and for unauthorised expenditure in the so-called First World Oriya Language Conference. The session was programmed till 13th instant.
In the 15th Assembly Chief Minister had used fraudulence to amend the Official Language Act of Orissa. He had even obliterated the Cabinet decision dated 14 March 2018, which had finalised the draft amendment bill as per pencil vetting by the Law Department. He had taken away the legally prepared draft Bill from the Assembly file and put a fabricated draft there, which eventually got approval of the Assembly on the 1st of May, 2018. Such fraudulence in Law making is never marked in any democracy anywhere.
This legislative misconduct of the Chief Minister was brought to records with official documents in my two books namely Oriya Bhashaku Naveenanka Maranaaghata (Naveen’s Deathblow to Oriya Language) published in 2021 and Vartsaniya Bidhanasabha (Condemnable Assembly) published in 2022. The 16th Assembly being the sovereign house in action in these these two years and up to end of the last session on Friday, the Chief Minister should have been subjected to prosecution for breech of its privilege. But it never happened.