Puri: Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s announcement to remove the memorial of his legendary father Biju Patnaik from the Swargadwar cremation ground for its development, has raised many questions and confusion in the minds of people.
Patnaik Friday had announced that the Swargadwar will be developed at a cost of Rs 5 crore with all modern facilities and made an emotional appeal to public to co-operate with the government.
The Chief Minister said the memorial of late Biju Patnaik, his father, will be removed from the Swargadwar cremation ground.
The residents of Puri have welcomed the decision to develop the Swargadwar but wanted to know whether the development would be made within the existing 465 decimal cremation land or would be expanded by removing all illegal encroachment identified by the nine member committee in 2017.
The state government in 2017 had allocated Rs 94 crore for land acquisition for expansion of Swargadwar cremation ground.
Two advocates Ramesh Prasad Sinha and Prasana Kumar Dash had filed cases in various legal forums to shift the Samadhi on the ground that the existing 465 decimal cremation ground was inadequate to meet the ever growing needs of people.
They argued that Swargadwar is a sacred place for all Hindus of the country and taking away land for samadhi was unjust and pleaded for its shifting. The lower court had ordered the removal of the memorial from the Swargadwar crematorium. But, the Puri municipality and the district administration, the opposite parties in the case, had filed an appeal in the district judge court against the order of lower court which has stayed the lower court and the matter is still pending.
The advocates said anticipating possible defeat in the legal battle the Chief Minister had announced to shift it to avoid embarrassment.
The residents have questioned why the prosecution against the Swargadwar land grabbers was stopped midway.
In 2011 noted environmentalist Jagannath Bastia in a petition to the member board of revenue had alleged that 16 acre and 400 decimal Swargdwar land was recorded in favour of lord Jagannath with amrutamanohi (nectar food) status in 1899.
Surprisingly only 465 decimal of swargadwar land was left for cremation and Bastia sought inquiry into the matter and to restore the property .
The then member board of revenue had directed the then revenue divisional commissioner (RDC) AB Ota to conduct a thorough probe.
The RDC constituted a nine member team comprising officials of revenue, land settlement, land consolidation, land officer of Sri Jagannath temple, officer of Puri
Konark development authority, Puri Tehsildar headed by the then collector Aravind Agarwal. The committee was directed to complete probe within one month.
Out of the 135 land files the team inspected and detected fraud in 65 cases and submitted an interim report.
The then RDC directed the collector to lodge complaints with police and to initiate action in civil court to resume the property and to remove all illegal occupants from the cremation land.
While a massive operation began by the administration to remove all encroachments from the land it was suddenly stopped.
Residents urge the Chief Minister to direct an inquiry into this incident and take action against the person who effectuated the derailment of the operation to protect land grabbers.
Many Biju lovers plead with the Chief Minister to establish a mega Biju Patnaik international park along the Puri – Konark marine drive road in which all the work of
Biju Babu should be kept on display. This would give opportunity to foreigners to get first hand information about Biju babu, they said.
(UNI)