Subhas Chandra Pattanayak
The new Chief Minister of Orissa Mr. Mohan Charan Majhi has restored Biju Patnaik in the nomenclature of Sports Award. “The Biju Patnaik Sports Award” was promulgated when Naveen Patnaik had cooked up a conspiracy to keep his grip over Orissa tight by confusing the people with his father’s name prefixed to almost all the welfare projects. People of Orissa refused mandate to Naveen in the last election. In appreciation of the mandate, mandarins in the Sports Department jettisoned Biju’s name from the Sports Award and rechristened it as “Orissa Rajya Krida Samman” Chief Minister Majhi has disapproved the change and restored the earlier nomenclature.
To me, this step of Mr. Majhi is not incorrect. The Sports Award is official. Hence, any change to its name should have been properly proposed by the administration and approved by the CM. Sans this, the change was arbitrary. The CM, therefore, has done no wrong in restoring Biju’s name in the title of the Award.
But, he should take prompt steps to withdraw Biju’s name from all the projects named after him, including the Biju Patnaik Sports Award.
This is essential in interest of democracy. The government that has been dethroned was formed by the Biju Janata Dal and christening official projects by the name of Biju was overwhelming the gullible people to such devastative extent that they were unable to perceive the difference between Biju-named projects and Biju Janata Dal. They were thinking, all the welfare projects available to them such as Biju Krushak Kalyana Yojana ,Biju Gramya Jyoti Yojana, Biju Saharanchal Vidyutikaran Yojana etc. were gifts to them by Biju Janata Dal. Therefore, despite loot of Orissa, BJD was getting their votes, till they were convinced of Naveen’s death blow to their beloved Language.
For more than a decade, I have been demanding for deletion of Biju’s name from official projects. Even before election 2014 I had appealed the Election Commission to ban the projects named after Biju for the reasons noted above and detailed therein. ORISSA MATTERS had published the same under the caption:
Election Commission now must ban operation of all Orissa projects named after Biju Patnaik.
Continuing official projects named after a man by whose name a political party participates in elections is nothing but playing havoc with electoral wisdom of the voters.
I hope, Chief Minister Mohan Charan Majhi will apply his wisdom and take prompt steps to withdraw Biju’s name from Orissa’s official projects.
I insist that Biju’s name from all official projects be withdrawn or Biju Janata Dal is banned.
Democracy deserves not to be dismissed as a farce.