Dirty tricking on Orissa Legislature

D N Singh

Perhaps never before in the history of any state legislature, the Speaker has been accused of sexual harassment by a lady marshal, and is forced to step down! The man who had been enjoying the enviable privilege to preach morals to the members of the House now finds himself in the gallows. Notwithstanding the veracity of the allegations made by Assistant Marshal Gayatri Panda, the charges have left an indelible smudge in the face of the Speaker`s chair. While the police is yet to probe the allegations, the damage has already been done. Few questions, which emanate from the way the case was brought before the police, cannot be ignored. The lady in question had made some serious allegations against Speaker Maheswar Mohanty, which need no repetition, but the manner in which the allegations were made undoubtedly hint at some political angle. The way Gayatri was guided to selectively avoid the media is no less mysterious. After levelling the allegations, it took Gayatri more than 24 hours to lodge a complaint with the police. Strangely and to the surprise of many, she filed the written complaint at the local Mahila Police Station through a trusted NGO. And before that, on the night of March 24, the NGO held a press briefing to which a few selected news channels were invited. The manner in which NGO members came to the Mahila Police Station with Gayatri’s complaint without even having a forwarding note from her attracted criticism and delayed the registering of FIR by over 72 hours. If the NGO claims to be championing Gayatri’s cause, it is hard to understand the compulsion behind the lady going into hiding for almost a week. If local media reports are to go by, the Speaker became a victim of the ongoing internal fight within the ruling Biju Janta Dal (BJD). The battle was in fact between Information and Public Relations Minister Debashish Naik and the Speaker over a strained relationship between the two. But nobody knows exactly over what? The local media has even gone to the extent of claiming that the lady in question enjoys enormous support of the minister and it was his strength on which she could think of crossing swords with the Speaker. Gayatri’s well-wishers seem to have overdone many of the things and the whole episode now seems to be crossing all moral boundaries. Even Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik found the whole issue irreparably messed up with a political overtone and sacked the minister, who was otherwise his close confidante. While the Speaker has resigned and the minister removed from cabinet, restoring respect to the Chair would be difficult. Only an impartial probe into the entire issue seems to be the only way out.