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Tragedy at car festival

This year’s car festival has turned tragic. This is surely a man-made disaster. Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik and Governor and Ministers sought police protection for their own security but devotees’ securities were given a go by.

We cannot keep forgetting every accident that emerges from laxity of administration. There has to be some sort of accountability which should be fixed on these police officials and the political leaders who are their bosses.

They conducted scores of preparatory meetings, security parades, prohibited vehicles and frisked everybody. But what is the end result? Six persons died and hundreds sustained injured.

The Chief Minister ordered a probe, which he had been doing after every accident. The probe never comes out conclusive and most of the culprits go scot-free.

The methods of dealing the culprits in bureaucracy should be changed and we need accountability everywhere.

Sujata Panda

Kalahandi district

The East Coast Railway (ECoR) is headquartered in Orissa, which is also dubbed as disaster capital of the country. But the way ECoR managed its human resources and utilized its infrastructure for restoring railway line is really baffling. As we live in an era of natural calamities and man-induced disasters, every organization must have an in-built mechanism to combat them. But what the railway authorities did was a proof of how poor we are to deal with disasters.

For more than 20 days, people of Orissa could not plan going to West Bengal and vice versa. The Indian Railways has tonnes of accolades for it newly developed management skills under Railway Minister Laloo Prasad. But where are they? All those got crumbled in a single flood. Had there been a super-cyclone, the railway authorities could have taken a decade time to restore normalcy. Time has arrived to chalk out strategy to meet challengers posed by different disasters.

Prakash Sahu

Bhubaneswar

Ram Singh Munda, a resident of Keonjhar, was lodged in jail. His only fault was that he rescued a sloth bear and reared it. But he became eyesore for animal rights activists, who think no other themselves can them love animals.

According to a buzz, one rights activist conveyed this to lady animal activist sitting in New Delhi, who in turn made a phone call to our Chief Minister. And what happened next is a big debate on human-animal relationship.

The same set of animal activists surfaced again and shed tears that injustice was meted out to Ram Singh. They came and tried every thing to hog the limelight.

The innocence of Ram Singh could have been easily preserved had the forest officials acted prudently.

They should have only rescued the bear and let off Ram Singh giving a dose of awareness. But all the actors messed the whole affairs.

Rabindra Senapati

Cuttack

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