Several organisations here celebrated the birth anniversary of Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose on Thursday.
The Manav Adhikar Suraksha Manch celebrated the occasion with its members garlanding Netaji’s statue at the PVN Rao Petrol Tank Square. Addressing the gathering, Manch coordinator Abani Kumar Gaya said Netaji had wanted to free India from the Eastern front with Subhash Brigade, Azad Brigade and Gandhi Brigade.
He recalled that Subhas Bose, after coming to know so many incidents of the exploitation of fellow Indians by the British in 1916, thrashed his British teacher EF Otten, who made a racist remark against Indian students. As a result, he was expelled from the Presidency College, Calcutta and the Calcutta University.
MASM general secretary Maguni Nahak and president Upendranath Mishra demanded establishment of a full-fledged statue of Netaji at a central place between the Khallikote College and the Sashibhusan Rath Government Women’s College in the city. Among others, social worker Dr AR Verma, Bishnupriya Rana, Bansidhar Bhuyan, Sambasiva Rao, Prasant Das and Krushna Charan Panigrahi participated in the event.
Abani Gaya expressed his concern over the “negative attitude” of some educational institutions like the Berhampur University for not observing the Netaji Jayanti. When this correspondent contacted the University Vice-Chancellor Prof Deepak Kumar Behera, who was in Delhi, to know as to why the university was not holding any function or garlanding Netaji’s statue but merely declaring the day as a holiday, he merely stated that the university did not hold the Netaji Jayanti in the previous years.
A large number of BJP workers led by party town president Rama Kumar Patra, workers of the DSO, members of the Ganjam Zilla Vikas Manch led by its advisor advocate Siba Prasad Mishra and president Bhukant Sahu, Rabindra Maharana, Gopal Pattnaik, Ashoak Pattnaik, Ranjan Maharana, academician Govind Das, Dillip Kumar Choudhury, Prof Ranganath Mishra also garlanded Netaji’s statue.