Mili Panda Matter: Essential Need is Elimination of Judicial Blunder

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Orissa High Court has done the best by quashing the cognizance in Mili Panda matter. But yet, essential need is elimination of judicial blunder.

Mili Panda by name is known to every conscious citizen of Orissa, because she stands synonymous with withstanding the tortures that a vindictive Government inflicts.

She is the wife of revolutionary Sabyasachi Panda whom police is eager to hound, but has not succeeded in catching; which is, many fear, the reason of its vindictiveness, the impact whereof she is being forced to bear with.

She is a mirror in which the Government can see the reflection of how ugly it looks with the cosmetics of law and order when police is pressed to victimize earmarked individuals for their support to revolution against exploitation.

In her, we find, how a citizen suffers when the Government becomes a conspirator, specifically as she continues to suffer incarceration notwithstanding the State’s High Court having quashed the wrongful proceedings against her in criminal misc case No.3080 of 2010.

CRLMC No. 3080 of 2010

In preferring this case before the High Court of Orissa against wrong prosecution, Ms. Mili Panda (Subhashree Das) and two others (Kishore Kumar Jena and Sangram Bhol @ Sangram Bhola) prayed that the cognizance taken in G.R. Case No.16 of 2010 by the Judicial Magistrate (First Class) (JMFC) of Banpur and Sessions Trial commenced on commitment vide S.T. No.12/116 of 2010 in the Court of the Ad hoc Addl. Sessions Judge (F.T.C.), Khurda, arising out of Balugaon P.S. Case No.8 of 2010 corresponding to CID (CB) P.S. Case No.1 of 2010 under the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (hereinafter called the Act), be quashed on the grounds shown in their petition.

Orissa High Court earmarked the question of cognizance as the crux of the issue; heard the parties and quashed the cognizance taken by the JMFC and the resultant proceedings in the sessions case by allowing the CRLMC on 19 October 2011; because to it, the cognizance taken was an act against the Act.

Prosecution acts against the Act

From the High Court judgement it transpires that Ms. Panda and the two others were arbitrarily subjected to prosecution under the Act, which is an extremely stringent law, by the police that sloughed over the core condition laid down under the Act as “a very salutary safegurad” against arbitrariness and despite that the JMFC had taken cognizance.

Let us focus on this.

The police was certainly under pressure – probably to demoralize Sabyasachi Panda – to arrest and incarcerate Mili Panda, without bothering, if thereby the Act was to be contravened.

Sans pressure, the police could not have acted against the Act the way it has in Mili Panda case.

In this case, we see, the core provision of the Act, which, in fact, is the prerequisite for Courts to take cognizance under the Act, was completely ignored, so rash was the police in its steps to torture Ms.Panda and her two compatriots (hereinafter Ms. Panda for the sake of convenience in expression).

And, perhaps the court was under pressure. The pressure was, perhaps, very overwhelming. So overwhelming that, the JMFC was not able to refuse to take cognizance, even though the core provision of the Act does not allow such cognizance to be taken by any court without fulfillment of the conditionality laid down therein.

Core Condition

The core condition of administration of the Act is laid down under Section 45 that prohibits Courts to take cognizance unless prerequisites are fulfilled.

It stipulates:

(1) No Court shall take cognizance of any offense –

(i) Under Chapter III without the previous sanction of the Central Government or any officer authorized by the Central Government in this behalf;

(ii) Under Chapters IV and VI without the previous sanction of the Central Government or, as the case may be, the State Government, and where such offense is committed against the Government of a foreign country without the previous sanction of the Central Government.

(2) Sanction for prosecution under sub-section (1) shall be given within such time as may be prescribed only after considering the report of such authority appointed by the Central Government or, as the case may be, the State Government which shall make an independent review of the evidence gathered in the course of investigation and make a recommendation within such time as may be prescribed to the Central Government or, as the case may be, the State Government.”

This core condition is conspicuous by its absence than implementation in the instant case.

Legislation against arbitrariness

The Act being a very stringent Act, shrewdly designed to suppress the voices raised on behalf of the oppressed but silent majority, though in appearance made to control the rogues, from the beginning of its implementation, its misuse against innocent people by unprincipled, unscrupulous and exploitive apparatus of the State was alarmingly rampant.

Therefore, whenever any opportunity was available to speak on administration of this Act, as many members of Parliament as were allowed to speak, were castigating the Government for misuse of this Act.

This had necessitated an amendment in the Act to insert a safeguard against its misuse.

In fact, when the Amendment Bill was taken up by the Rajya Sabha, the Home Minister, while answering the debates, had to admit that it was not possible on his part to reject the allegations of misuse of the Act.

He said that the executive government registering cases under the Act “through a police officer”, misuse of the Act is possible as and when the executive government becomes “vindictive”. Hence, the amendment was conceived as “a very salutary safeguard” against arbitrariness in prosecution under the Act, he had said.

“Finally, Sir”, he had told the Rajya Sabha, “we have incorporated a very salutary provision. To the best of our knowledge – I don’t know, I may be corrected by the Law Minister or the Law Secretary later – it is the first time we are introducing this.

“In a prosecution under the UAPA, now, it is the executive Government which registers the case through a police officer. It is the executive Government which investigates the case through an investigating agency, namely, the police department. It is the executive Government which sanctions U/s.45. Therefore, there is a fear that a vindictive or a wrong executive Government could register a case, investigate and sanction prosecution. There is a fear.

“May be, it is not a fear that is entirely justified but you cannot say that it is entirely unjustified.

“So what are we doing?

“The executive Government can register the case because no one else can register a case. The executive Government, through its agency, can investigate the case. But , before sanction is granted under 45(1) we are interposing an independent authority which will review the entire evidence, gathered in the investigation, and then make a recommendation whether this is a fit case of prosecution. So, here, we are bringing a filter , a buffer , an independent authority who has to review the entire evidence that is gathered and, then , make a recommendation to the State Government or the Central Government as the case may be, a fit case for sanction.

I think, this is a very salutary safeguard . All sections of the House should welcome it. This is a biggest buffer against arbitrariness which many Members spoke about. Sir, these are the features in the Bill.”

By adopting the Bill, the Parliament approved the legislative intention thus spelt out by the Home Minister.

Hence, for the police to register any case under the Act and for any Court to take cognizance thereof, the prerequisite is fulfillment of the core condition i.e “sanction” of the concerned Government given within a “prescribed time” for institution of the case on the basis of “recommendation” made “within such time as may be prescribed” in favor of the case by “an independent executive” created as “authority” for the purpose, after “making an independent review” of “the evidence gathered in the course of investigation”.

In the case of Ms. Panda, this prerequisite was totally ignored. Yet, the Banpur JMFC could take cognizance!

Attempts to hoodwink the High Court

The Government was so intrinsically involved with the arbitrary prosecution of Ms. Panda, that, when the order of cognizance was challenged, the prosecution tried to mislead the High Court by projecting one A.M.Prasad, claimed to be “Special/Additional Secretary of Home Department” as the authority who had reviewed the evidence as required under Sub-Section (2) of Section 45 of the Act and had “recommended approval of the prosecution”.

Records of the High Court show that the State had produced a letter dated 24.2.2011, containing an extract taken from File No.PIC/1 (Pro) 93/2011 which contains the “review notes” of Prasad, the Special Secretary/Additional Secretary of Home Department.

The number of the file indicates that it was created in 2011. How then the so called review notes of Prasad could pave the way for government sanction in 2010? And how is it that the Government could not specify as to whether Prasad was the Special or the Additional Secretary, because the two posts are distinctly different in the level of rank; the Special Secretary being higher in rank than the Additional Secretary and one officer cannot be of two ranks at the same time under the same department.

So, obviously, the authenticity of the so called review notes communicated to the High Court was stage-managed to hoodwink the Court.

But, it seems, the court refused to be hoodwinked.

From its judgement delivered on 19 October 2011, it transpires that on query, the Court found that Prasad was not the “authority” to “review” the evidence. He was not appointed to review the evidence and to make the recommendation for prosecution against Ms. Panda under the Act.

The Court “asked” the Additional Government Advocate (AGA), representing the State of Orissa “to produce any document/order of appointment” of Sri Prasad “issued by the appropriate authority, appointing him as the ‘review authority’ under Section 45(2) of the Act”. And, the Court notes, “To this query, learned AGA fairly responded that, no such formal appointment order appointing the Special Secretary for the purpose of reviewing cases under Section 45 of the Act is available on records. To a further query of the Court as to whether the State have prescribed any time limit for the purpose of producing such report by the reviewing authority, learned AGA for the State also responded in the negative”.

Cognizance quashed

It was clear to the Court, from the answers to its queries by the AGA, that, the State had not “appointed” any appropriate person “as the authority for the purpose of carrying out an independent review as required under Section 45(2) of the Act” requiring him to furnish his review report and recommendation within a “prescribed” “time limit”. The “very salutary safeguard” the Parliament had created for saving the citizens from concocted cases contrived by “vindictive” executive Government and, in the words of the Home Minister in spelling out the legislative intention behind this provision, “the biggest buffer against arbitrariness” in prosecution under the stringent Act, was thus absent when the Banpur JMFC had taken cognizance of the case filed against Ms. Panda.

This makes it absolutely clear that the prerequisite for taking cognizance of the case was absent and the cognizance taken in the Banpur Court was ultra vires.

On this ground and on decisions in various cases relied upon, Justice Indrajit Mohanty quashed the cognizance taken by the lower court, “forbidden” as it was by the Act from taking cognizance in absence of valid “sanction order” based on valid “review of evidences gathered in course of investigations” by a validly “appointed” “authority”.

He quashed the cognizance on the ground of non-adherence to the mandatory prerequisite. To quote the judgement,

“In view of the conclusions/finding reached hereinabove, this Court is of the considered view that, no cognizance could have been taken against the petitioners in the absence of any valid sanction of the prosecution and in this regard, although sanction for prosecution had been obtained, yet the same was not based upon a review by a validly appointed authority to carry out “independent review of evidence” obtained in course of investigation. Therefore, the very foundation for obtaining such sanction being not in consonance with law, the order of cognizance dated 16.7.2010 passed by the learned J.M.F.C., Banpur in G.R. Case No.16 of 2010 ought to be quashed and this Court directs accordingly.

Insofar as the other contentions as noted hereinabove are concerned, this Court is of the view that the same need not be dealt with in the present case, since the order of cognizance has been quashed”.

Cognizance quashed, the case stands quashed in the Court of the the Ad hoc Additional Sessions Judge (FTC) Kurda also, as it is a case commenced on commitment on the basis only of cognizance taken.

Hence the case against Ms. Panda does not exist since 19 October 2011. But anarchy does not end.

Quashing of cognizance not enough

When the case does not exist after quashing of the cognizance, it is surprising that the crime branch of police has filed a supplementary charge-sheet against Ms. Panda under claims of fresh evidence stumbled upon.
“At the time of submission of the charge-sheet earlier, we had informed the court that the case was open for filing of supplementary charge-sheet under section 173 (8) of Cr.PC,” claims the prosecution. But, how does a Court entertains this claim when the case has no life after quashing of the cognizance?

Shenanigans

Had the JMFC of Banpur not taken cognizance, the case created against Ms. Panda in the Police Station could never have had a judicial life. So, on extermination of the said cognizance by the High Court, the life of the case has already been extinguished.

It is now nothing but a dead case.

It is a case that no more exists for judicial purpose.

How then does a Court entertains the so-called supplementary charge sheet and how does a government dares to play on the corpse of the case by pumping into its file post extermination sanction orders?

Shenanigans point out how anarchic is the government’s game with the law.

Marking their own defects in course of hearing in the High Court, they had tried to build up a sound cognizance of the same case at Banpur by presenting a supplementary charge sheet with a second sanction order. Yet it not being fault free, they superseded the 2nd sanction order and produced a 3rd sanction order with which a second supplementary charge sheet was filed before District Judge, Kurda at BBSR.

Why is it being entertained is a conundrum.

Clamant questions

The Judiciary ought to have tried to find out as to why the government is so motivated against Ms. Panda? Why the government is not behaving as a impartial government in ensuring rule of Law? Why it tried to hoodwink the High Court with a stage-managed sanction order and why it, thereafter, tried to vitiate administration of the Act with a second sanction order on projection of a supplementary charge sheet and when that failed to click, why have they been allowed to “supersede” the second sanction order and to file a third sanction order supporting a second supplementary charge sheet? Does the Act equip the police or the Government with any carte blanche to manufacture such sanction orders and supersede one by another to suit its nefarious design? Is it not killing of the spirit of 45(2) inserted into the Act as “the biggest buffer against arbitrariness”?

Contempt against rule of Law

The government conduct is so vitiated with contempt against rule of Law that quashing of the cognizance notwithstanding, prison bars continue to debar freedom to Ms. Panda. And, to keep the bars further tightened, unfounded allegations are being shut in a Court at Gunupur aimed at transforming Ms. Mili Panda to a mysterious Sima, claimed to have played a role in Naxal-Police encounter in 2003, despite the fact that the said encounter case was so very concocted that all the six accused that had been subjected to humiliations of under-trial life, have been acquitted on hearing.

In attempt to victimize Ms. Mili Panda in the Gunupur case, formalities falling within the frame of 173 (8) of Cr.PC were not observed. To hound her, steps also are taken to entangle her in a case of 2008 armory loot in Nayagarh.

Sinister motive

We see in her prosecution the reflection of sinister motive of the British trade based Government in prosecution of freedom fighters of India.

And, there is no doubt, that more and more numbers of Indian patriots will be prosecuted like this as the country is now under the grip of traders with democracy shrewdly transformed into plutocracy.

Both the political and executive governments being in nexus with traders and exploiters in a plutocracy, patriots who would act against the nexus, will certainly be subjected to false cases in increasing numbers.

Judiciary need be more responsible

So, Judiciary shall be looked at as the only refuge for seekers of peaceful life for self and society. In such circumstances, Judiciary need be more responsible than how it acted in taking cognizance against Ms. Panda.

The false and concocted cases may ultimately end in rejection due to the wisdom of Judiciary in higher to highest level. But by then, unless the “buffers against arbitrariness” as created under the Act are strictly adhered to in lower judicial level, people like Ms. Panda will be suffering the ignominy of imprisonment on wrongful cognizance of the cases. So, essential need is, not the quashing of wrongful cognizances alone, but also elimination of judicial blunder in taking cognizance, by way of punishment if necessary.

Judiciary in every level will have to be more responsible if rule of Law is to prevail.

Insult to Orissa: Its Body of Letters Sleeps over Writers’ Demand to Recall the Best Novelist Award Given to a Plagiarist

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Orissa administration has become so very immoral and corrupt that even the official body of letters – Orissa Sahitya Akademi – is sleeping over a just and proper demand to recall the best novel award it has given to a plagiarizer, even after being notified by eminent authors of the State about the mischief.

The alleged plagiarist, Manoj Kumar Mohapatra, whose book ‘Nirvana’ has bagged the best prize in the segment of original novels with retrospective effect from 2007, is a top executive in the mining division of IMFA, an industrial house run by the family of a member of Parliament, marked very close to the Chief Minister of the State as well as to the power wielders at the centre and so close that, despite habitual default in repayment, his firm could organize waiver of bank loans to the tune of Rs.2300/- crores in 2007 with the entire non-communist political class keeping mum and the high judiciary refusing to see through the game, as to the judges, the two PIL cases filed successively against the waiver did not merit judicial consideration; because, the first one was “barred by delay” and the second was “barred by the principles of res-judicata and delay”. The Judiciary also stayed away from ‘judicial activism’ in this matter and hence the country never came to know whether the waiver was genuine or a loot.

Mohapatra is backed by this industrious house of industry.

The moment he bagged the award, IMFA lost no time in putting its “pride” on records and gave him a space to say that he personally was “equally proud that being an employee of corporate sector like IMFA (he) got this award which is a rare phenomena in the literary world”.

But soon it was to come to light that the book ‘Nirvana’ for which he got the “most prestigious Odisha Sahitya Academy Puraskar” (in the words of IMFA), was not an original novel, but a heavily plagiarized Oriya version of Vietnamese Buddhist monk and author Thick Nhat Hanh’s ‘Old Path White Clouds’.

Dr. Bibudharanjan, a mercilessly uncompromising researcher, whom a very oppressive State fails to deter from exposing wrongs of howsoever revered a celebrity is, as is evidenced in his book ‘Michha Mahatma’ which the Government has proscribed but none has dared to rebut, first confronted Mohapatra with plagiarism resorted to in his work and latter, as no response was received, discussed the issue in the October 2011 issue of Saamnaa under the caption Buddhachori that attracted attention of the readers and authors of Orissa, who felt ashamed of Orissa Sahitya Akademi’s best novel award going to a fraudulently produced work of plagiarism.

Citing Dr. Bibudharanjan’s Saamnaa story, eminent authors and literary activists united under the banner of Mukta Sahitya Mancha raised a collective protest against honoring of a plagiarist as the best novelist by the State’s official body of letters and demanded that the honor given to Mohapatra with retrospective effect be immediately recalled, at least, in the interest of Orissa’s literary dignity.

But who in the Akademi bothers for Orissa’s dignity, when the firm of the Chief Minister’s blue-eyed boy expresses “pride” in bagging of the award – howsoever fraudulently it be – by one of its employees?

In fact, many in the Sahitya Akademi, eager to ingratiate themselves with the wielder of power that could hoodwink the entire nation in the matter of loan waiver involving a massive sum of Rs.2300 crores, had neither any qualms in organizing the best novel award for the plagiarist nor have any, in not waking up to the call of the authors of the State to salvage Oriya prestige by recalling the said award so wrongfully given to the plagiarist.

Clumsily created as a Society under the Societies Registration Act, the Orissa Sahitya Akademi is entirely controlled by the State Government and manned by their handpicked men and women. Therefore, by pleasing persons that matter in power, any award aspirant is able to fetch the prize of his/her choice even with retrospective effect and/or felicitation.

This is why, there are persons, with role in or proximity to power, capable of making compromises or whose black purses were able to afford, have, in the past, entered into the galaxy of authors by bagging awards from the Akademi. This is so shamelessly practiced that there are instances where such awards are stayed or struck down by Courts of law. Genuine writers of Orissa are worried over this.

But the Sahitya Akademi has no worry.

Probably, it is the Court again where the Award in question may take a test on issues of probity, legality and tenability.

Even as no fraudulent work can withstand any test on the matrix of probity, the legality of consideration of the alleged work for the award in the Akademi level will not stand the test of law.

In its constitution, elaborating its aims and objectives, provisions are made to restrict its awards only to the “outstanding works”.

It is authorized “to award prizes and distinctions and to give recognition to individual writers for outstanding works” as per clause (b) of its provisions on “organization and functions”. So “outstanding work” is the only criteria on which awards are to be offered. A fraudulent production or a work of plagiarism cannot be an outstanding work. When legality of the award rests with outstanding distinction of the work considered for award, a fraudulently produced work of plagiarism cannot have any legal ground to merit even consideration for the award. Hence, on ground of legality, the award for best novel given to Mohapatra’s Nirvana is not tenable.

The book is a depiction of the life of Buddha in a form of a novel. In its preface, Mohapatra has given hints to his study of several books on Buddha including ‘Old Path White Clouds‘ before finalizing the scheme of his book. So it was imperative for the Akademi or its selection committee constituted for the purpose to compare his work with the source materials to see if the same was not vitiated with plagiarism. If the Akademi or its authorized committee has not done so, then a wrong is done. If the comparison is made, then plagiarism must have been noticed. If the Akademi has ignored it, then it is a blatant wrong. Dr. Bibudharanjan has rendered the best of services to Oriya literature by exposing the black-sheep and the Mukta Sahitya Manch has taken the most appropriate step in demanding immediate correctional steps in the matter to save Orissa from a global embarrassment.

It is not that this matter is a matter that goes on without the knowledge of the State Government.

Let it be known that it is a matter of worst implication for the image of Orissa. Delay in action against the users of fraudulent means in this particular matter is an offense against the State. Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik having given the award was a party – might be unknowingly – to this offense. But by not taking any action against the Akademi despite exposure that has rocked the State, he certainly is knowingly a party now to the continuing offense against Orissa and her literary dignity.

This has to stop at any cost.

Let it be known to the Chief Minister that awarding a book – fraudulently copied down from a foreign language through plagiaristic means – with the best prize for original work in Oriya language by the State’s official body of letters, is an insult to Orissa, which can never be countenanced.

Noted Activists Tell Of Their Experience: Police-State Has Subdued Democracy In Narayanpatna

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

1. The Chasi Mulia Adivasi Sangha (CMAS) and the people of Narayanpatna are fighting to restore their due rights over land and resources, which the state should rather ensure. Why is the state treating them as dreaded criminals instead? Has the state already decided to abandon the Constitution?

2. Under which law is the martyr’s day observed by the people of Narayanpatna an unlawful act that the state let loose such large number of police and paramilitary forces to stop it by terrorizing and brutally beating up innocent people?

3. Have we already formally become a ‘police state’ that freedom of expression and free movement of ordinary citizens are crushed in such barefaced manners?

4. Why is the state so evidently reluctant to settle land disputes in the area? Why are hundreds of people who simply asked for their due rights over their own land still languishing in jail, and those who have been perpetrating untold violence on the local people are given state protection?

Thus ask a group of noted activists, comprising senior journalist Rabi Das, Convenor of Lokshakti Abhiyan Prafulla Samantra, Convenor of Orissa Jan Adhikar Manch Dandapani Mohanty, Nisan editor Lenin Kumar and film maker Subrat Kumar Sahu, who witnessed on 20 November 2011, how democracy has been subdued by a “Police-State” in the Narayanpatna Block of Koraput District.

The group was proceeding towards Podapadar village to attend a public meeting that CMAS had convened to pay tributes to Wadeka Singana and Nachika Andrew for the supreme sacrifice they had made two years back on the day when the State had unleashed a bloody attack on unarmed tribals there, who were collectively urging upon the police at Narayanpatna P.S. to stop victimising innocent citizens in the style of stymieing Maoist spread.

Podapadar was about two kilometres away when at Basnaput village a pack of armed BSF men under the instigation of the Officer-in-charge of Narayanpatna Police Station stopped their vehicle on the road and refused to allow them to proceed.

In a statement issued to Press, they have said,

“We tried to convince them (the BSF men and the Police) for hours that the forces had no constitutional right to curb free movement of any citizen and that the public meeting called by the CMAS at Podapadar was well within democratic sanctions and, therefore, they had no right to stop or intimidate people coming to attend the meeting. We were, in turn, kept engaged by the BSF men and the Thana in-charge of Narayanpatna in meaningless discussions without them giving any appropriate reason for not allowing us to proceed. They kept repeating some hollow explanations: “We are instructed from higher authorities not to let anyone go beyond this point” or “Maoists have laid land-mines on the way” and so on. The district Collector on phone expressed ignorance about any such order ‘from above’ to stop people while the Koraput SP did not pick his phone. Interestingly, right at that point, a tractor was allowed to go ahead on the way where ‘Maoists had laid land land-mines’, and about an hour later, the same tractor came back unscathed. After more than three hours of debate, we had no option other than returning from Basnaput village.

“On our way back, between Basnaput and Bandhugan, we met several people who narrated to us how the paramilitary forces had attacked and brutally beaten them up when more than a thousand people were peacefully marching towards Podapadar to join the event. Even women and children were not spared; a 12-year-old boy looked terrified and baffled as he showed us his badly swollen face and narrated the assault on the people! Later in the day, we further learned that police and paramilitary forces had forcefully stopped and terrorised at different places thousands of people coming to join the meeting from various directions. Despite such terror unleashed all around by the forces, more than 5000 people had assembled at the Shahid Stambha (martyr’s pillar) at Podapadar. The forces reached there too in the afternoon and started beating up the people mercilessly in attempts to disperse them. Several people were injured, some severely, and at least three of them have been arrested. In the evening, at around 9 pm, we got the news that police had demolished the Shahid Stambha for the second time within a year. This is an extremely obnoxious act of cultural violence in which people are denied their fundamental right to remember and pay homage to their dead ones”.

Condemning such police lordship over democracy, the group of progressive activists has called upon patriotic members of the civil society to join hands in solidarity with the victimised tribals of areas like Narayanpatna, so that freedom is no more frustrated by police-raj.

The State has been reduced to a Police-State to suppress the save-the-people-movement being led by CMAS in Narayanpatna, the group observes.It underlines –

“The CMAS has been fighting to restore the rights of native communities over their own land and resources, to shut down illegal liquor shops, and to reclaim their cultural ethos on face of the hegemony established by non-adivasi landlords, moneylenders, and bootleggers. The democratic movement has questioned the unconstitutional manner in which the state had played facilitator to the cultural and economic appropriation in a ‘scheduled’ area. The CMAS has also strongly come in the way of the state’s nefarious plans to hand over the Deo Mali range to mining hawks for profits at the cost of the economy and culture of the local adivasis. To ensure protection to the land-grabbers, liquor traders, and corporate interests, a state of terror has been let loose in the area, with police and paramilitary forces given impunity for their excesses”.

“If the state claims to have any respect for the Constitution, we expect it to meet our following demands immediately”, the group has stated.

The demands are:

(a) The State should withdraw the entire paramilitary forces from Narayanpatna; (b) release all the people of Narayanpatna who have been illegally put behind bars; (c) withdraw all the cases falsely registered against hundreds of adivasis in the Narayanpatna area, including those against CMAS leader Nachika Linga; (d) settle all land disputes in the area after duly consulting the local people and (e) scrap all the MoUs with corporate and government entities relating to mining on the Deo Mali range.

Chief Minister Injures Ligament on Right Leg: Is Exposed Land Scam Too Worrisome to Keep Him Stable?

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik is not coming to his chamber in the State Secretariat since 17 November and Officers have been taking urgent files to his residence, because he has severely injured his right leg ligament by falling down while taking a regular walking exercise in the campus of his residence.

To have such an injury by falling down while walking where one is not well acquainted with the place, is not unusual. But a physically and mentally fit person’s fall in his own residence campus where he performs the walking exercise habitually everyday and knows every bit of the stretch and its surroundings, to the effect of developing a severe injury, cannot but be unusual.

Had he remained attentive, he could not have fallen. Then was he inattentive? The question is clamant, because he is an autocrat in a pattern of administration that people believe to be democracy.

There are many instances of men in high positions missing steps or making wrong movements due to inattentiveness to the extent of exposing themselves to danger.

Oleg Penkovsky was caught, because he was seen inattentive in a coffee bar. Viktor Suvorov (Vladimir Bgdanovich Rezun) describes Penkovsky as a man, whom “historians will remember with gratitude”, as, because of “his priceless information the Cuban crisis was not transformed into a last world war”. He was zeroed in by the British Intelligence when his coffee cup was noticed missing his mouth prompting the watching sleuth read in that a reflection of inattentiveness, which eventually materialized in exposure of the secrets he was to vomit, leading to change of circumstances then provocative enough to drag the world into the third (or the last, as Suvorov preferred to say) war of destruction.

So, there is reason to apprehend that Mr. Patnaik was under a condition of stress even in the morning and thereby was precariously inattentive during his morning walk when he fell down.

Though the real reason of such inattentiveness must be known only to himself, it is feared that he was under heavy stress due to exposure of land scam that was at the pertinent time hitting headlines, throwing him into severe predicament with possibility of unveiling of how he has obliged private land-grabbers, high court judges, political colleagues, IAS and IPS officers but for whose active and tacit support, the offenses committed against the people of Orissa could not have been executed.

Amongst beneficiaries of discretionary allotment of plots and houses in Naveen’s regime are former Chief Justice G B. Patnaik, Supreme Court Judge Deba Priya Mohapatra, former Orissa High Court Judge Radhakrishna Patra and others like Justice Sanju Panda, Justice Madan Mohan Das.

Beneficiaries amongst IAS officers include Chief Secretary Bijay Kumar Patnaik (two places) and others like Rabinarayan Senapati, Priyabrata Patnaik, Pradipt Kumar Jena, Alaka Panda, Aruna Kumar Panda, P.K.Mohanty, Bishal Dev, Arunodaya Swain, Nikunja Behari Dhal, Asok Kumar Tripathy, Rajkumar Sharma, Kishore Chandra Barik, Ratindranath Padhi,Sanjay kumar Singh (two places), Madhusudan Padhi, Pradipta Kumar Mohapatra, Prasant Kumar Nayak, Bhaskar Jyaoti Sharma, Anil Kumar Samal, Bipin Bihari Mohapatra, Bikash Chandra Mohapatra, Bishnupada Sethi, Laxminarayan Nayak, Chandrasekhar Kumar, Priyaranjan Shaha, Niranjan Sanyal, Rabiranjan Mallik, Vinod Kumar, S.N.Tripathy, Suresh Chandra Mohapatra, K.C.badu, T.Ramachandra, S.B.Agnihotri, Santos Kumar Sarangi, Santosh Kumar Mishra, Satyabrata Sahu and Sanjib Kumar Mishra.

Amongst the IPS officers, beneficiaries are the Police Chief Manmohan Praharaj, and Anup Patnaik (two places), Bijay Kumar Sharma (two places), Satyajit Mohanty (two places), M.Aksaya, Sudhansu Sarangi, Prakash Mishra, Suresh Palsania, Arun Bothra, K.B.Singh, Lalit Das, Sushant Das and Panabindu Acharya (two places in wife’s name) etc.

No political leadership in the past has obliged salary drawers like these fellows with plots of residential/commercial lands in blatant violation of guiding norms, as has happened in the government of Naveen Patnaik. Obviously these fellows are obliged as tentacles of maladministration.

On chance ride on political horse, Naveen has driven away the priority of administration from agriculture – the State’s well settled source of self-employment of maximum of her inhabitants for thousands of years – to mega industries of foreign and non-Oriya root of whom the majority has looted Orissa’s natural resources, specifically valuable mines, before even commencement of factories.

He has sabotaged higher education by keeping majority of faculty posts vacant in general and technological colleges and universities in the public sector and encouraged through sheer nonchalance the private techno-institutes to fill up their larger-than-justifiable-numbers of seats with students below mediocre standards with de facto offer of post-dated degrees that parents/families with black purses easily afford as well as Banks swollen with investors’ surplus money, lend.

He has sabotaged the health sector by not educating the public about exploitation by private hospitals while all the hospitals in periphery and medical colleges in public sector are left to suffer draught of doctors, faculties and operators of medical equipments even as their indoor patients jammed in dirty and uncleaned wards get easily trapped by ever haunting agents of private hospitals to shift thereto even if that requires sale of whatever properties they possess to defray their exploitive unbridled charges, in hopes of survival against hope, in absence of any care from the State.

So, in most essential sectors – food, employment, education and health – people of Orissa have suffered a set back in the regime of Naveen Patnaik. Yet he is in power, because corrupt and shrewd fellows in IAS and IPS, who control administration, have been collaborating with him and his gang in politics; even as elements of black-sheep in judiciary have contributed to creation of a feeling that it is not easy to establish a guilty as guilty, as a result of which bureaucratic collaborators of Naveen have acted sans qualms so long.

But with exposure of how judges and IAS as well as IPS officers have been obliged by distribution of lands with lucrative monumentality, Naveen has perhaps gone into a jitteriness that he is just not able to overcome at the moment. This is perhaps the reason of his inattentiveness, which, a legally authorized investigation by a team of experienced investigative journalists and criminologists combine can unveil.

In the past, the then chief minister R.N.Singhdeo had, notwithstanding being in power, subjected himself to a Commission of Inquiry when question was raised over his integrity. Will Naveen follow the precedence? He should; because it looks as if the exposed land scam is too worrisome for him to keep himself stable.

He is so unstable and vulnerable to blackmailing by some of his senior colleagues that he doesn’t dare to drop them from his cabinet despite their admitted acquisition of additional government plots was evidently facilitated by false affidavits.

Orissa (changed to Odisha under a misconceived Act) needs end of this nastiness.

Editor's Picks

Oriya Language created Orissa and therefore Orissa must be ruled by Oriya Language

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik seems to have developed a wrong notion that governance of Orissa in Oriya depends upon his mercy. His press-note of December 17 and full page display advertisement in major broadsheets of today force us to arrive at this apprehension.

In his December 17 press note it was declared that he had held a meeting with the five members of the ministerial committee on that day for the purpose of “strictly implementing the Orissa Official Language Act, 1954 in official and non-official level” to facilitate which a website has been floated by the government. In the full page multi-color advertisement in broadsheet dailies today, this is intriguingly missing.

The advertisement is designed to tell the people that Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik has taken historical steps to save and develop Oriya language, and has enumerated the steps he has taken. This is blatant lie. Neither he nor his government has executed any single item claimed to be “historical” in the official advertisement. The entire advertisement is nothing but false propaganda. What a shame it is, that, the people of Orissa are taken for granted by their Chief Minister! Read more →

Navakalevara: Legends and reality

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

Legends are the most misguiding mischief aimed at superimposing lies on reality so that indigenous people of an occupied land are kept too dazzled to see the dark face of the rulers and the class of exploiters can keep its victims subjugated to its authority, while forcing them to forget the heroic history of evolution of their own philosophy of life, their own splendid spiritual realizations, their own socio-economic uniqueness, their own ancient culture, their own valorous past, their own way of social integration and their own civilization.

We see this mischief galore in the context of Navakalevara of SriJagannatha.

So, here, we are to rip apart the legends and bring the reality of the Navakalevara to light, as thereby alone we can reach the lost uniqueness of the people of Orissa.

We will use Puri Sankaracharya’s self-proclaimed authority over Navakalevara to proceed with our purpose.

  Read more →

Samaja in Maze of Forgery: Two former Ministers of Orissa – Lingaraj Mishra & Radhanath Rath forged the WILL of Gopabandhu; Both benefitted till their death; SoPS continues to Loot

Subhas Chandra Pattanayak

The Oriya daily SAMAJA founded by late Utkalmani Pandit Gopabandhu Das, to which, out of their love and reverence for the great humanitarian leader, the people of Orissa had and have been giving their financial and moral support, is in a menacing maze of forgery and loot.

Sadly, two of Gopabandhu’s trusted men – Lingaraj Mishra and Radhanath Rath – who, because of being known so, had the opportunity of becoming cabinet ministers in Orissa, were the masterminds and/or makers of the forgery from which the paper is yet to be salvaged.

Both of them – Lingaraj and Radhanath – had partnered with each other in forging the last WILL of Gopabandhu to grab the Samaja, which being Gopabandhu’s paper was of superb credibility and the greatest political instrument of the day. They had performed this crime behind the screen of and in nexus with Servants of the People Society (SoPS), of which, while breathing his last, Gopabandhu was the Vice-President. Read more →