People of Kuchinda, a sub-division in Sambalpur district, were shocked at the death of Chhattisgarh Pradesh Congress Committee (PCC) president Nand Kumar Patel in the Maoist attack on May 25. Patel was known to them not only as a politician but as a close relative to many locals.
Patel’s daughter is married to son of Dr Sarat Chandra Gauntia, a renowned medical practitioner of Kuchinda.
He toured this region extensively and had planned to develop dairy farms for economic development of the people of the backward region in the model of his native village in Chhattisgarh. “But his dream remained unfulfilled,” lamented Dr Gauntia.
Patel was also a personal friend to Congress Member legislative Assembly (MlA) Anup Kumar Sai Brajarajnagar near here as well as to some mediapersons of Sambalpur.