India

Will the New Odisha CM Be Able to Renounce His Own Track Record?

It is a blot on Odisha that the BJP has picked Mohan Majhi – who campaigned to release Graham Staines’ killer – as chief minister.

Mohan Charan Majhi at an RSS event. Photo: X/@MohanMOdisha

Four-time BJP MLA Mohan Charan Majhi was sworn in as chief minister of Odisha on June 12 in the presence of Prime Minister Modi and other top national leaders of the BJP.

While flagging his tribal identity and humble origins, the BJP never took into account his shameful record of sitting on dharna in front of Keonjhar jail in 2022 demanding the release of convicted criminal Dara Singh, serving a sentence of life imprisonment for multiple heinous murders, including that of Graham Staines and his children in January 1999.

It is a blot on Odisha that the BJP has picked Majhi as chief minister, succeeding Naveen Patnaik. Patnaik, who was CM for record 24 years, famously snapped an alliance with the BJP in 2009 following the anti-Christian riots in the Kandhamal region.

Killing of Graham Staines by Hindutva forces

The brutal killing of Graham Staines and his minor children in Odisha in 1999 shook the whole country, and the international community expressed deep anguish and outrage in response to that monstrous crime. KR Narayanan, who was President of India at the time, described the murders as “a monumental aberration of time-tested tolerance and harmony” and said “the killings belong to the world’s inventory of black deeds”.

In the face of country-wide fury and rage that the Bajrang Dal – a militant Hindutva outfit affiliated to the Vishva Hindu Parishad and with close links to the RSS – was behind the cold-blooded murder, Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee sent a three-member cabinet team to Odisha and announced a judicial inquiry headed by a Supreme Court judge. He also assured strict action against the perpetrators of the crime.

With deep sorrow he stated that Staines’s murder constituted “a blot on our collective consciousness” and went against everything that Gandhi taught us.

In fact, following protracted judicial proceedings, the principal accused in the case, Dara Singh of the Bajrang Dal, was convicted and sentenced to death by a sessions court. In 2005, the Odisha high court commuted this to life imprisonment. Later in 2011, the Supreme Court upheld the life imprisonment imposed by the high court.

Mohan Majhi’s support to Dara Singh

Eleven years later, Suresh Chavhanke, editor, of Sudarshan TV – a channel known for spewing hate against people on account of their faith – demanded Dara Singh’s release. He even came down to meet him in Odisha’s Keonjhar jail, where he was serving his life sentence.

When jail authorities rejected the request, Chavhanke sat in protest outside the jail, and Mohan Majhi, the local MLA, joined him along with some other locals and extended support to his  demand.

“Dara Singh has been in jail for [the] past 21 years,” stated Chavhanke, adding that “there is hardly anyone who is imprisoned for more than 20 years in the country”. He described the rejection of his request to meet Dara Singh as a violation of his rights and indicated that he would move the apex court to challenge it.

Mohan Majhi, who was also the BJP’s chief whip in the Odisha assembly, said: “This is a just demand. If [the] situation warrants, we would discuss in the party to back him.”

The same Majhi, upholding the so-called just demand for Dara Singh’s release, has now taken oath bearing true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of India as chief minister of Odisha. But his disgraceful record of sitting in dharna demanding Dara Singh’s release is an affront to the Constitution, as well as to Odisha and its people.

Majhi’s record makes one apprehensive about his ability and willingness to uphold communal amity and the secular ethos of Odisha, which was endangered by the Kandhamal riots of 2009, when the BJD-BJP alliance was in power in the state.

Only last year, during Hanuman Jayanti, homes and business establishments belonging to Muslims in Sambalpur were destroyed by Hindutva forces. The violence also affected Hindus as well, because the harm caused to communal unity hurt the local economy and livelihood in equal measure.

Majhi’s track record – indicated by his support to Dara Singh in 2022 – raises many disturbing questions about his ability to govern Odisha by upholding the constitution.

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