Narasingha Mishra brings breach of privilege notice against Odisha CM Naveen Patnaik

BHUBANESWAR: Congress legislature party leader Narasingha Mishra on Wednesday served a breach of privilege notice on chief minister Naveen Patnaik and minister of state (home) Tushar Kanti Behera, alleging that they misled the assembly on judicial monitoring of probe into health minister Naba Das’ murder.

Speaking to reporters outside the assembly Narasingha said Behera has made a misleading statement that retired HC judge JP Das was nominated by the Orissa high court to monitor the probe. The minister cited precedence of the Supreme Court appointing a retired judge to monitor the violence at Lakhimpur Kheri in Uttar Pradesh in October 2021 though there is no comparison between the two, he said.

“This is grossly misleading. The Supreme Court has passed a judicial order while appointing retired Punjab and Haryana high court judge Rakesh Kumar Jain to monitor the investigation into Lakhimpur Kheri incident. However, the Orissa HC has passed no such order to monitor the Naba probe,” he said.

Narasingha, a five-time MLA and former law minister, said the state government has only obtained an administrative order from the HC for a retired judge’s monitoring into Naba probe. This can’t be called court monitoring of the probe, he said.

Replying to a question by Narasingha asked to the CM, Behera on Monday had said the HC had nominated retired judge JP Das to monitor the Naba probe on the request of the Odisha government. He gave the example of SC nominating Jain to monitor the UP violence “on similar lines which may be treated as a precedence.”

Narasingha said he served the notice on both CM and Behera because the latter had replied on behalf of the CM. The chief minister through his MoS had intentionally misled the house to escape opposition’s criticism, he said. Speaker Bikram Keshari Arukha said he will examine the notice.

While Behera could not be contacted for comment, senior BJD MLA and former law minister Arun Sahoo said Narasingha was trying to mislead the entire Odisha with his baseless statement. He should apologize to the people, he said.