Demand for Kalinga State reiterated

The Kalinga Rajya Gathan Kriyanusthan Committee, which has been spearheading the movement for formation of separate State of Kalinga in the present southern region of Odisha for seven years, has decided to intensify its campaign in the wake of the Centre’s move to form a Telangana State in the neighbouring Andhra Pradesh.

Retired Professor of Economics Prahallad Panda, a founder of the Committee, on Saturday alleged that the southern region, which played a decisive role in the formation of the separate province of Odisha in 1936, has been neglected for long.

Speaking to The Pioneer, he pointed out that it was at the Rasulkonda congregation in 1870 that the King of Katinga had first raised the voice for formation of a separate State of Odisha. Then, after at the Rambha session of the Ganjam Jatiya Samiti, the Utkal Sammilani was formed that played the pioneering role for formation of the separate State. At the Round Table meeting in London, as many as nine members, including Maharaja Krushna Chandra Gajapati, Mandhadhata Gorachand, Shyam Sundar Gantayat, Dinabandhu Das, VV Giri, Sriparsuram Patra, Ram Chandra Mardharaj, Lingaraj Panigrahi and Jagan Mohan Patnaik, out of the ten were from the southern region.

But after the formation of the separate province, this region has been neglected in the fields of education, industrialisation, healthcare and communication, though the region has been contributing highest land revenue, excise tax and commercial tax. Hence, a separate State of Kalinga should be formed comprising the districts of Ganjam, Gajapati, Kandhamal, Koraput, Malkangiri, Rayagda and Nabarangpur that had been part of the then royal kingdom of Madhyam Kalinga, he said.

Source: The Pioneer