India News | Unwilling to Work Under Professional Junior, OHRC Member Resigns
Get latest articles and stories on India at LatestLY. Upset over the appointment of a professional "junior" as the chairperson of the Odisha Human Rights Commission (OHRC) Justice (retired) Raghubir Dash has resigned as a member of the statutory panel.
Bhubaneswar, Feb 12 (PTI) Upset over the appointment of a professional "junior" as the chairperson of the Odisha Human Rights Commission (OHRC) Justice (retired) Raghubir Dash has resigned as a member of the statutory panel.
The development came barely two days after the state government appointed Justice (retired) Satrughana Pujahari as chairman of the rights panel.
In his resignation letter addressed to Governor Ganeshi Lal, Justice Dash wrote, "The newly appointed chairperson of OHRC is the right person with the ability to raise the reputation of the institution to the next level by his tireless efforts to protect the interests of the victims of human rights violations.
"However, my conscience, as well as a sense of self-respect, dissuades me from continuing to hold the office of a member of the OHRC under the chairperson-designate who, as a judge of the High Court of Orissa, was junior to me."
Justice Dash was a judge of the Orissa High Court from January 2013 to February 2016 while Justice Pujahari was appointed to the court in 2014.
The new OHRC chairperson was transferred to Madras High Court in 2017 only to return to Orissa High Court again in November 2018.
In 2019, Justice Dash was appointed as the acting chairperson of OHRC. His tenure at the rights commision was scheduled to end in December this year.
He was also the chairman of the commission of inquiry probing the missing Ratna Bhandar keys of Jagannath Temple in Puri.
The state government had on February 10 appointed Justice (retd) Pujahari as the chaiman of the OHRC and advocate Asim Amitabh Dash as its member.
(The above story is verified and authored by Press Trust of India (PTI) staff. PTI, India’s premier news agency, employs more than 400 journalists and 500 stringers to cover almost every district and small town in India.. The views appearing in the above post do not reflect the opinions of LatestLY)