Orissa Matters

Actions against Samaja employees are illegal in view of a verdict of Orissa High Court

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

A verdict of the High Court of Orissa in a case involving Servants of the People Society (SoPS) makes it clear that the occupiers of the Samaja had no de jure legitimacy to put working journalists and non-journalist employees of the premier news daily to loss of job and enforced idleness.

A pack of miscreants posing as people’s servants has hijacked the SoPS of which Pt. Gopabandhu Das was the vice-president at the time of his death and has illegally occupied his newspaper, The Samaja; and are playing havoc with the leaders of the employees and looting its revenue.

As allegations against some of its life members and functionaries over the misuse and loot of the Samaja mounted beyond suppression, the SoPS was forced to appoint a high power enquiry committee on 10 March 2010 under chairmanship of its trustee Sri Arijit Pasayat, a former judge of the Supreme Court of India, to probe into the allegations received up to 05 July 2010.

Pasayat Committee found that most of the allegations were based on facts and documents. It did not forget to report that the men in charge of the Samaja at that time had tried to obstruct his investigation.

“We note with a heavy heart that right from the beginning there appeared to be an effort to create hurdles so that the Committee does not arrive at the truth”, the committee noted at the beginning of the report.

To the Committee, the allegations were not untrue; but it did not dare to name who had tried to obstruct the enquiry.

The Committee further noted,

“It was brought to our notice that one life member even went to the extent of questioning the authority of the Committee to seek certain information about some of the employees. We were shocked to learn that the said life member without any authority to do so (at a critical time i.e. when huge quantity of newsprint was to be purchased) permitted Sri Hemant Kumar Sahu, against whom allegations were there which were being enquired into by the Committee, to join. This was highly objectionable as Sri H.K.Sahu was asked by the Board of management to go on leave till completion of enquiry. It was known to the concerned Life Member that the report was to be given on 5th February 2011. Therefore, the allegation of many employees that the concerned Life Member was openly supporting and trying to protect Sri Sahu appears to be genuine”.

The Committee should have named this Life Member; but sadly it did not dare to do that, even though, as such, in view of discernible facts, the Committee was unable to reject the allegations.

Why it did not dare to name the miscreant who had tried to obstruct the inquiry? Justice Pasayat should come forward with the answer, specifically as he is one of the Trustees of SoPS.

Presently, as we see, the Samaja is being run by unauthorized persons. One of them is Niranjan Rath. He was of course enquired into by Justice Pasayat committee.

“A Life Member is mandated to maintain pure personal life, but if any member is of objectionable character and reputation, it is against the interest of the Society (Servants of the People Society) and therefore, his Life Membership has to be terminated” the committee had opined in his case.

Manubhai fled

Manubhai Patel was the president of SoPS as well as the Chairman of the Board of management of the Samaja when rampart misappropriation of the Samaja funds and corrupt practices of fellows in office of the newspaper was reported necessitating the enquiry.

Patel also figured in a writ petition WP (CRL) No.408/2011 in which the Orissa High Court issued a direction to DGP Orissa to enquire into criminal offenses alleged against him.

In General Body meeting on 25.4.2011, SoPS took strong decisions against misappropriations of Samaja funds and misconduct and tried to cleanse its leadership by removing the miscreants from office and by subjecting them to exemplary disciplinary proceedings.

The resolutions and minutes of the GB were suppressed and Manubhai fled, leaving the office of the President de facto vacant.

The extraordinary GB attended by all the members of SoPS on June 9, 2011, under Agenda item No. 5, recorded, “a vacuum and a situation of uncertainty had been created”.

New President and EC

In the circumstances, the GB elected Sri Onkar Chand as President and six other members including K. C. Tripathy and Niranjan Rath of Orissa as members of the Executive Council.

Chand appointed Tripathy as Vice-President and subsequently, for smooth management of the Society, delegated all his powers to him and Sri Tripathy was also appointed as the Member-in-charge of the Samaja and Orissa Branch.

SoPS decided to implement the Pasayat Committee report. As a preliminary action taken on this report, Niranjan Rath, who was tactfully shunted out of the Samaja headquarters by Manubhai Patel by his order dated 4.3.2011, was asked to hand over charges of GIMSAR, a health point run with the Samaja funds in the name of Gopabandhu Das, with immediate effect, as under him, that institute had become a hub of criminal activities.

He was removed from membership of the society with immediate effect on 27.6.2012 because of “forgery, misappropriation, acquisition of portfolio by fraudulent manner”.

Lady used as sexual arsenal

Earlier, while functioning as the media manager, he had vitiated the moral environment of the Samaja with shameless sexual involvement with a lady junior assistant in the media management section. The PBAX of the Samaja was often getting jammed because of bawdry between the two. On being informed of this, Braja Bhai, then the General Manager, had wanted their bawdry recorded and that was done. The original tape of their obscene talks was given to Justice Arijit Pasayat Committee. The Committee, in its report said, “The original tape is sent along with our report. Since it involves personal reputation and character of a person, we thought it proper to request the Board to hear the tape itself, consider the explanation furnished by Sri Niranjan Rath and take appropriate action”. When action on the tape recorded bawdry was about to be taken, Rath and his gang seized the SoPS office by way of a coup executed through an illegal election and he became an executive member of the organization. The lady got an unprecedented lift to the post of a sub-editor.

A senior employee of the Samaja has told on camera that Niranjan intimidates anybody who goes against him with threats to use this lady as an arsenal of sex allegation.

Illegal election challenged

However, the illegal election was challenged by Sri K.C.Tripathy in the appropriate civil court at Cuttack. When the case was considered a fit case for adjudication, the court declined to grant the interim relief as both the misc case and the main suit were seeking the same relief and therefore grant of the interim relief sought for could have given the relief sought for in the main suit. So, instead of granting the relief in the misc case, the suit was set for expeditious disposal, without restraining the illegal occupiers from handling the Samaja. Tripathy preferred an appeal before the District Judge, Cuttack, as unless put under leash, the illegal occupiers of the Samaja were suspected to further damage the institute.

“Tripathy has a full proof case”

The District Judge observed that Tripathy had “a full proof case”. In the opinion of the District Judge, the newly elected Executive Council with the President appears to have prima facie no authority to continue as the executive council of the SoPS. He therefore ordered,

“during pendency of the suit the Executive Council, which is functioning now, shall not take any policy decision and also any decision having financial implications except meeting day to day expenditure of the SoPS and its organizations without the leave of the Court and also the prior approval of the General Body of the SoPS, and the petitioner-appellant (K.C.Tripathy) shall be allowed to function as a member of the General Body of the SoPS and the suit shall be disposed of within two months hence”.

The correctness of this judgment of the District Judge has been confirmed in a subsequent case before the Orissa High Court.

Confirmation of the correctness of the District Judge order in the High Court, as far as the election claimed by Patel is concerned, has made one thing very unambiguously clear. And, that is, the newly elected Executive Council with Patel as the President appears to have prima facie no authority to continue as the executive council of the SoPS.

But the illegal occupiers of the Samaja blatantly violated the orders of the District Judge and enhanced their activities having financial implications.

They have illegally thwarted eminent employees into enforced idleness, stoppage of their entries to workplaces, stage-managed disciplinary proceedings, dismissals and atrophy of their provident fund accounts.

But as the District Judge has observed and the High Court has agreed, the Patel fraction has no sanction of the constitution of the SoPS to occupy its offices in the relevant time and hence, their actions against the employees have de jure no legitimacy.

On this premises, the labour law machinery should wake up to protect the workers from victimization. But it does not dare to wake up as the illegal occupiers of the Samaja have tamed the chief minister through dubious means.

It is worth waiting to watch how the law acts vis-a-vis blackmailing power of the of the illegal occupiers of the Samaja.

Tamed Pet

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

India is embarrassed by the misconduct of a lady officer of Indian Foreign Service in USA. But Indian Government is acting as a tamed pet to protect the same officer. And, in this, the misusers of freedom of press have an overwhelming role.

A section of Television media, almost in a Hitlerian style, have made a lot of noise over prosecution of the officer by the law-keeping machinery of USA for having committed offenses prosecutable under American laws, as if action against her has shattered the nationalistic pride of India.

The lady officer’s offenses are (1) false information provided to procure Visa for a private female servant and (2) exploitation of the said female servant as an employer.

The Tv channels are not focusing on these offenses; but are busy in amplifying how the lady officer caught for the offenses was strip searched, cavity searched and how DNA swabs were collected from her in custody. Somebody must be getting a sadistic pleasure out of such avoidable amplification, though such nasty details must further have disadvantaged, disappointed and embarrassed the lady.

A matter of more concern to unbiased Indians is that, in this case, a section of the corporate Tv media has been making a farce of free press by making noise over prosecution of the offender as if an Indian diplomat is entitled to stay unanswerable to charges of cheating the law and exploiting the servant!

Whether or not the allegations against the lady officer are factual is a matter for the court to decide. But for corporate Tv media in India, her prosecution in USA is an affront to India’s pride.

The sordid aspect of Tv media conduct in this matter is that no dissent is being allowed in panel discussions over the issue. As for example Sri Meghna Desai, a prominent participant in panel discussion over the issue in Times Now channel, was not allowed to elaborate why he was not willing to side with the channel in condemning US action against the lady diplomat. Other panelists were so much encouraged to condemn him for his honest voice of dissent that he had to fold his hands and repeatedly bent his head to be pardoned from the panel. Arnab Goswami did not feel ashamed of what sorry state he had dragged the discussion to! Is it not Mediacracy overtaking whatever semblance of democracy India has? Indian politicians are not ashamed of this degradation.

But unbiased Indians are ashamed of the fact that a lady consular officer, who, by the virtue of her posting carries the mana of India in her person, has shattered Indian pride by being prosecuted over visa fraud and exploitation of a female worker she had imported to USA from India thereby.

She should have been recalled to face parallel trials in this country for her misconduct. But instead of that, she has been given UN assignments in order to give her impregnable diplomatic security!

Official shenanigans over the issue do not merit mention. India has a Prime Minister in Manmohan Singh, who, till reprimanded by his extra-constitutional master Rahul Gandhi as ” nonsense”, had no intelligence to understand that law-breakers were not to be protected through an ordinance in an attempt to foil a Supreme Court verdict and who, thereafter, has ensured by way of amendment in law that India is not to be cleansed of corrupt and malicious law-makers as readily as the Indians want!

Such a government is bound to act a tamed pet to bureaucrats and burrowing media run by corporate houses.

Not no more, the man forever

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Seldom has the entire world mourned a death. The world mourns for Mandela. The world is one in honoring his unique contributions to freedom from inhumanity.

But he is no more, they say. To us, he is not no more. He is a man forever.

As long as exploitation is not extinguished and plutocracy not exterminated, as long as caste and/or color supremacism is not completely wiped out, he shall continue to guide the world as beacon of militant action against apartheid and exploitation.

“Only through hardship, sacrifice and militant action”, he had said, “can freedom be won. The struggle is my life. I will continue fighting for freedom until the end of my days.” (ANC Press Release, June 26, 1961)

The fight is to continue. Mandela is to live despite his demise.

We bow to him as ever and forever.

Sad News to share: Harabala Patnaik no more

Harabala Patanik, wife of eminent freedom fighter and one of the founders of C.P.I. in Odisha Late Raghunath Patnaik of Olasingh village in Khurda district passed away at 5.45 a.m. on Friday ( 6th December ) at Bhubaneswar. She was 92 and has left behind her 3 sons and 8 daughters, a large number of grand and great grand children.

Daughter of a respectable Sarbarakar of erstwhile raja of Nayagarh late Banchhanidhi Patnaik , Harabala, though had no formal education, became very much active socially and politically after her marriage with Raghunath , who had left his education while a student of Ravenshaw College , Cuttack to join the freedom struggle. Subsequently when her husband joined the Communist Party of India under leadership of Bhagabati Charan Panigrahi as one of the founder members, she boldly faced harassment of the police.

The comrades while in underground use to come in deep nights through a secret door while her husband was away in party mission and she had to cook for them without hesitation. According to many veteran leftist leaders, she was not only feeding them with good food at the odd hours of night, she was also packing enough dry foods and rice etc, for them to sustain for weeks while underground.

She had entertained with tasty food to leaders like Naba Krushna Chaudhury, Dr Hare Krushna Mahtab, Manmohan Mishra, Godavarish Mohapatra, Godavarish Mishra, Banamali Patnaik , Prananath Patnaik and many others.
Besides taking care of all her nine children she also took care of seven children of her sister-in-law Bindodini who died at a young age.

She was a mother figure for all the local people and was loved and respected by one and all. Harabala’s eldest son Prasanta is a media person of repute while her second son Pravat is an entrepreneur in Andhra Pradesh. Her third son Dr Pragati who was serving the deprived people of Nagaland had fell victim to the bullets of separatists and fourth son is engaged in business. Her eldest daughter Prativa who was married to freedom fighter and ideal teacher Kanhu Charan Patnaik expired two years ago. Rest of her children are well established in their own fields.

When her body was taken for cremation a large of people from Olasingh and adjacent villages joined to pay their last respect to the departed soul.

Withdraw security from the criminals, crimes shall end

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Most of India’s politicians are criminals as the criminals’ passion has become politics.

This syndrome is seen in ramparts of democracy having become safe havens for the perpetrators of crime: crime against competitors, crime against the country.

The situation is so bleak that when the Supreme Court of India delivered a mandate with specific instruction on how to keep the Parliament and Assemblies cleansed of criminals, the lawmakers, dominated by the criminals, amended the Peoples Representative Act to foil the ruling.

Italy born Sonia Gandhi’s Congress party has taken the lead in this. In fact, ever since she has emerged strong enough to invoke awe in the minds of the Congress members, democracy has dwindled to such low that political leaders have started thinking themselves as rulers. A new era of these “rulers” emitting aura of power with packs of specially trained armed personnel guarding them round-the-clock, has arrived and become the symbol of privilege in India.

Representatives’ emergence as rulers

Smt. Indira Gandhi, with the help of her sycophants, clamped emergency in India and metamorphosed into a ruler. The country drowned in anarchy and democracy lost its distinction.

Rabid rightists and all the branded corrupt fellows rejected by the people earlier for their political misconduct got together; and a confused people, overwhelmed by Indira Gandhi’s misrule and emergency excesses, chose this conglomerate of corrupt and self-centric fellows as a Hobson’s choice only in order to get rid of Indira and her scheming stooges.

Janata party thus occupied India with Morarjee Desai as the Prime Minister and an era of political opportunism, favoritism, nepotism, misappropriation of public funds, sabotaging of public interest for personal gain, and all sorts of felonies politicians can resort to, commenced.

Like vultures fight over a carcass for more share of the flesh, the constituents of the Janata government fought against each other over their booty and the conglomerate collapsed.

In fact, death of Morarjee government was organized by Biju Patnaik, when, on allegation of the Janasanghi fraction, Desai had asked Justice R. Gattani, a former Judge and a member of Janata Parliamentary wing to enquire into Patnaik’s role in black-market of iron and steel and report for action.

With Patnaik’s shrewd collaboration, Charan Singh took over as Prime Minister on July 28, 1979. He made such a farce of administration that people brought back Indira Gandhi to power in January 1980. But instead of accepting that she was the Hobson’s choice in a peculiar situation, she continued to be guided by the sycophants and emerged an autocratic ruler. Consequently she was killed.

Her son Rajiv Gandhi, whom she was grooming to inherit her “throne”, occupied the prime-ministerial chair. And India had to acquiesce in the syndrome to have her people’s representatives act as rulers from which there is no reprieve as yet.

Italian influence engulfs administration

And, then, surprisingly, Italian influence started affecting decision-making process in the Government run by the Congress party. The department of defense was the safe grazing ground for the Italians, as defense deals protected by the Official Secrets Act, was not supposed to be exposed to public gaze.

An instance of Italian influence in defense deals, that Rajiv’s finance minister V.P.Singh could not digest, ill-famed as the Bofors scandal, despite all out attempts by the Manmohan Singh Government under the control of Sonia Gandhi to keep its Italian kingpin Ottavio Quattrocchi untainted, refuses to be erased from the pages of history.

Quattrocchi, not punished by India where Sonia – an Italian by origin – de facto rules, has died in heart attack. But Italian influence continues to affect defense deals.

An instance is India’s order for 12 numbers of AW101 helicopters for use by VVIPs from Italian firm Finmeccanica through its subsidiary AgustaWestland. The Rs.3,546 crores worth contract was placed with the Italian firm despite the defense minister’s objection to selection of the copters without any test of their suitability in Indian condition. Though Air Chief Marshal (Rtd) S.P.Tyagi is now booked by the CBI for kickbacks received in the deal, the decision for the deal despite objection by the Defense Procurement Board as well as the Defense Minister could never have been taken unless still higher powerful persons had supported the deal. Who is the person whom Tyagi and his acolytes could have considered more powerful than the defense minister to go ahead with the deal with the Italian firm needs to be found out; but it is not in the agenda of the government, controlled by Sonia, it seems.

The helicopters were meant to be exclusively used by VVIPs along with their security guards, befitting their ruling status.

Status symbol

In 1985, to provide security to Rajiv Gandhi, a specially trained “Special Protection Group (SPG)” of guards equipped with assaultive weapons was created. After his assassination, his family – Mrs.Sonia Gandhi, son Rahul and daughter Priyanka – were put under this facility. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and former PM A.B.Vajpayee are the only two other persons that are put under this special group of guards, for which the country has been spending around one hundred lakhs of rupees every day.

Over and above these five persons, there are about 400 politicians belonging to non-Communist parties that have been enjoying life under protection by commandos of the National Security Guards round-the-clock at the cost of the public exchequer.

When for every lakh of the population in India 137 policemen are engaged as per official claim (in reality it is much less: as for example, in Tigiria Tahsil of Cuttack district in Orissa, with a population of 80,000, there is only one police station with ten policemen including a sub-inspector), the Government is on records to have spent around Rs. 341 crore on guarding VVIPs in Delhi in 2012 alone, most of which was spent on security of 376 individuals.

The Supreme Court of India, on July 09, 2013, had looked sternly at such denudation of the exchequer on security of VVIPs. If such arrangement for holders of constitutional positions is a situational necessity, “why is security given to those who are not in power and against whom cases are pending?” the apex court had asked.

Earlier on February 14, 2013 it had observed, “Positional security or security due to threat perception becomes a symbol of power.”

So, in considered opinion of the highest judiciary, positional security has become a status symbol. To define the status, the security being provided to the privileged persons are divided into several categories like Z+, Z, Y, X etc.

Insecureness caused by capitalism

In demanding PM level security (SPG) for Mr. Narendra Modi, the BJP has also admitted that political economy of capitalism in practice in India has made the country unsafe and insecure, though it is yet to confess that by not deviating from the political economy Manmohan Singh had clamped on India as Finance Minister of Narasingh Rao, it has helped the Congress precipitate this degradation.

Ever since Manmohan Singh’s emergence at the helm of India’s economic affairs, Indian democracy has constantly been changing into plutocracy.

The BJP rule under Vajpayee had helped this menace by not taking any action against stooges – the economic offenders – such as the hoarders, black-marketeers and adulterators etc on the one hand and on the other, by divesting India’s public of their Public Sector Undertakings by selling them away to private profiteers through a disinvestment ministry created in India for the first and the last time so far.

Plutocratic contradiction

Plutocracy was thus promoted and promulgated by both BJP and Congress.

But it is not without its contradictions.

Non-Communist politicians are bound to work for either of the two sets of beneficiaries of plutocracy: indigenous capitalists or foreign imperialists.

And, both these two types of beneficiaries of plutocracy are bound to vie for control over the country’s administration through their respective agents.

And this is happening in India.

Therefore we see, without attacking each other’s political economy, BJP and Congress are indulging in mudslinging.

They attack each other as acrimonious rivals, but never utter a word on unwanted transformation of India’s democracy to plutocracy.

Their battle is not against plutocracy; but is based on the contradiction of plutocracy toggling between Indian capitalism and American imperialism.

The 2014 general election, therefore, is to be a battle between Indian capitalism that BJP stands for and American imperialism that the Congress under Sonia-Manmohan set-up has been working for.

Not any leader, but a ruler

But both these wings of plutocracy do not need any leader, as a leader will depend on collective parliamentary wisdom, which would not be suitable for plutocracy all the times. Therefore, to each of them an individual is essential to be projected as prime-ministerial candidate much ahead of election. Transformation of India’s parliamentary democracy to plutocratic autocracy is what both the BJP and Congress want. In such a situation, whichsoever party wins, India shall be governed by a ruler in the guise of a Prime Minister.

And, a ruler is a ruler because of power. Therefore, show of power is so essential for them. And category of security given to them by the State symbolizes the power they enjoy and emit.

And therefore, BJP’s prime-ministerial candidate Modi, despite being provided with Z+ security, wants SPG in his service like the Prime Minister. And, therefore the government run by Manmohan Singh is denying him the facility, whereas the would be prime-ministerial candidate of Congress party, Rahul Gandhi has already been provided with this facility at the cost of public exchequer.

This mischief of plutocracy needs be stopped. Leaders acquiring and brandishing VIP or VVIP status are not the persons who would ever cherish to belong to common man category. They like to be treated as high dignitaries. Therefore, when Modi wants SPG security, Rahul Gandhi is not voluntarily renouncing this privilege.

This mentality of both Modi and Rahul is entirely detrimental to democracy and is capable of running riot on ordinary citizens.

Supreme Court observation

Justice G.S.Singhvi holding a Supreme Court Bench along with Justice H.L.Gokhale, on 15 February 2013 had observed, “Indiscriminate use of power in placing VIPs in a high dignitary category results in abuse of power. ………. If power is misused, it runs riot on ordinary citizens”.

Sadly, this observation goes barren, as the Supreme Court does not appear to have taken any step to see that the observation is honored, even though the Court is quite worried over criminalization of politics.

Withdraw security, save the country

Criminalization of politics has a direct link with political leaders being provided with high assaultive security protection. Withdraw the security guards, crime shall be drastically reduced. People shall tame the bastards to serve the country instead of serving plutocratic masters.

Best of our creative brains are giving this message in cinemas for decades. Watch any cinema in any Indian language, there are villains who run riots with the help of police power at their beck and call. People thrash them ultimately oblivious of the police and end their tyranny invariably by killing them or handing over the kingpin to the law.

The message clearly delivered thereby is: withdraw the police protection from the criminals, crime shall end.