Justice Raghunath Biswal To Head Odisha State Commission For Backward Classes

Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government on Wednesday constituted Odisha State Commission for Backward Classes under the Chairmanship of Justice Raghunath Biswal, a former Orissa High Court judge.

He had earlier served as President State Consumer Disputes Redressal Commission from November 2012 to March 2017.

This comes a day after National Commission for Backward Classes (NCBC) chairman Bhagwan Lal Sahni had slammed the government for apathy towards the backward community and delay in appointing OBC chairperson.

The other members of the Commission are — Navneeta Rath, Mitali Chinara and Prasanna Kumar Patra.

Rath is a distinguished social scientist in the Department of Sociology, who has also conducted studies on backward classes, while Chinara is a professor in the Department of Economics and well known in the field of Applied and Analytical Economics. Patra is a renowned anthropologist, whose research areas include socio-cultural, biological anthropology and demography. He is with the Department of Anthropology at Utkal University.

Veer Vikram Yadav, an IAS officer, has been nominated as Member Secretary of the Commission, which constituted in accordance with the provisions contained in the Odisha State Commission for Backward Classes Act 1993, an official press release said.