Best known Orissa Congressman, for both achievements and controversies

In 1969, Patnaik made one of the important decisions of his political career when he chose to go with Indira Gandhi.

Three-time chief minister of Orissa and senior Congress leader Janaki Ballabh Patnaik, who passed away at the age of 81 in Tirupati on Tuesday morning, was witness to the spectacular rise and near demise of his party in his state.

When he became chief minister of Orissa for the first time in June 1980, the Congress (I) had swept to well over 100 seats in the 147-member state assembly. Patnaik, who was then union minister for civil aviation, tourism and labour in the Indira Gandhi cabinet, was despatched to Orissa to head the party and government.

He continued to be chief minister until 1989, and took the post again between 1995 and 1999. He controlled the state Congress as its president for almost three decades until he was pulled out by party president Sonia Gandhi soon after the debacle in the 2004 assembly and Lok Sabha polls.

Considered by many as the only undisputed leader the Orissa Congress has had, Patnaik’s political career didn’t, however, take off for nearly three decades after his first brush with politics in 1950, when he became the president of the state unit of the Youth Congress.

It is not widely known that during the freedom struggle, Patnaik had once raised the Indian tricolour on the hostel building of Ravenshaw College in Cuttack after pulling down the Union Jack. Known for his erudition and grasp over Oriya and Sanskrit literature, Patnaik veered towards journalism, first becoming a sub-editor in The Eastern Times run by former chief minister Harekrushna Mahtab, and then went on to edit Prajatantra, a leading Oriya daily in the 1960s. He was a Standing Committee member of the All-India Newspaper Editors’ Conference between 1956 and 1960, and of the Sahitya Akademi of Orissa between 1956 and 1967.

Patnaik’s first shot at state-level politics ended in failure in 1967 after he lost as an Independent candidate for the Dharmashala assembly seat in Jajpur district. He realised he needed the backing of a political party to forge ahead. The same year, he joined the Congress.

In 1969, Patnaik made one of the important decisions of his political career when he chose to go with Congress(R) of Indira Gandhi, growing in stature and earning her trust. In 1971, he had his first electoral victory, winning the Cuttack Lok Sabha seat and then becoming deputy minister of defence in Indira’s cabinet. He held the post from 1973 to 1975, and was then minister of state for defence until 1977.

In 1979, he again showed his loyalty to Indira and Sanjay Gandhi by choosing to remain with Congress (I) when the Congress again split.
In 1980, he became a union cabinet minister.

Meanwhile, bigger opportunities were opening up. Nandini Satpathy, who was chief minister of Orissa during the Emergency, had become unpopular due to her ineffective control over the administration. As a political vacuum in Orissa loomed, Indira and Sanjay sent Patnaik to the state to take charge in June 1980.

His long tenure in power — Patnaik remained Orissa’s longest serving chief minister until he was stripped of that honour by Naveen Patnaik — was marked by a series of controversies, which possibly characterised his stint better than his performance in administration.

During his first term from 1980 to 1985, Patnaik refused to take action against a Congressmen allegedly involved in the gangrape and murder of the wife of a newspaper journalist in the coastal Jagatsinghpur district. The incident rocked the state as opposition parties accused Patnaik of siding with the rapists. The chief minister took no action until Indira reprimanded him, calling the incident a “ghastly murder”.

Patnaik’s tall claims of ushering industrialisation to the near zero-industry Orissa through slogans like “Thousand Industries in a Thousand Days” turned out to be hot air, as none of the MoUs with industrial houses translated into actual business. Patnaik continued to be in power until 1989, even though he gave the state’s control to the former works minister Basant Biswal, who was widely accused of corruption.

In May 1986, Patnaik’s image lay in tatters when The Illustrated Weekly of India, published a cover story on the alleged sexual escapades the chief minister, accusing him of exploiting those who came to him for jobs. Patnaik sued the Weekly and banned it in Orissa. Though he received a public apology in 1997 after a protracted court battle, the image stuck.

The next big controversy arrived that same year, when former advocate general Indrajit Ray, who had helped him fight the court battle against the Weekly, was accused of molestation by a housewife named Anjana Mishra. Mishra alleged the AG had molested her in his chamber where she had gone to discuss a case of dowry harassment that she had lodged against her husband. Patnaik took no action against his confidant till the Orissa High Court ordered an inquiry by the Central Bureau of Investigation.

In 1997 again, a Congress politician and former associate of the chief minister, Jaydev Panda, alleged in a sworn affidavit that his wife, Babita, was being sexually exploited by Patnaik. As the outrage peaked, the Pandas disowned the affidavit and described Patnaik as a “father figure”.

In January 1999, Patnaik faced one of the biggest controversies of his career after Anjana Mishra alleged that three men had gangraped her near a dhaba at the chief minister’s behest while she was travelling in a car. After the infamous Graham Staines burning incident the same month, Patnaik was asked to resign, but his vice-like grip over the party was intact.

Sonia Gandhi’s increasing control over the party coincided with the political demise of Patnaik. After the 2004 poll debacle, he was asked to step down from the president of the state Congress. However, he was made Leader of Opposition in the state assembly until 2009, when the Congress sent him on forced retirement as the Governor of Assam.

Patnaik is acclaimed for his literary skills. He is the author of a biography of the Buddha. He was also the editor of Paurusha, a monthly magazine published in Oriya, for a long time.

He leaves behind his wife Jayanti Patnaik, former MP, and a son and a daughter. His son-in-law Soumyaranjan Patnaik edits the leading Oriya daily Sambad.

Source:: Indian Express