Plea denied on ground that mountaineering is no sport
While the State Government is now quite concerned over the death of ace mountaineer Kalpana Dash, it did not do justice to her during her lifetime.
Dash had run from pillar to post in the Government corridors for a post in the police department on a sports quota like many other sportspersons have got. The first Odia woman to scale Mount Everest even repeatedly pleaded her case for a job in newspapers.
But the Government turned a deaf ear to her plea as it insisted that mountaineering is not a sport so that she could get an employment in its quota.
Dash had procured a recommendation from the then Leader of Opposition in the State Assembly Narasingha Mishra a few years ago in her effort for a Government job. But Home Secretary Asit Tripathy turned down the request reiterating the Government’s stand that mountaineering does not come under any sport category.
Ironically, after bringing Dash’s body from Nepal, the Government first placed it at the State’s premier sports centre Kalinga Stadium in Bhubaneswar on Sunday to facilitate her admirers to pay their last respects to her and later took it to the Mini Stadium at Dhenkanal, her birthplace, for the same purpose.
Notably, Kalpana Dash had a job at an industrial plant at Angul which she later quit as it was not remunerative and pursued for an employment as a policewoman.