Mourning Cover On M Karunanidhi Issued In Odisha Capital

Bhubaneswar: A black-bordered mourning cover on M Karunanidhi was issued by the Mourning Cover Society of India here on Thursday.

The Day of Death Mourning Cover was made on the evening of August 7 after the announcement about Kalaignar leaving for his heavenly abode and posted the same day. It was cancelled the following day at the Philatelic Bureau at Bhubaneswar GPO and later delivered by Sahid Nagar post office.

The cover was affixed with the recently issued stamp of Biju Patnaik. Karunanidhi and Biju Babu shared a very close and special relation.

Mourning covers are black-edged posted letters used in most countries, especially during the 19th and early 20th centuries, as harbingers of death and messengers of grief. Mourning covers and stationery are easily identified by their black borders. These death related letters  and covers are characterized by a mourning mark, almost always black, and have been carried in the public mail system of at least 250 different countries.

Mourning covers are issued on the death of statesmen, leaders and famous personalities.  Very few are issued, and the covers are collected by philatelists. The Mourning Cover issued on Mahatma Gandhi after his death recently sold for Rs 6 lakh.

Founder Secretary of the Society Anil Dhir said such covers had earlier been issued on Biju Patnaik, APJ Abdul Kalam, Khushwant Singh and even Saddam Hussein.

Of 500 covers issued, 300 have been sent to Tamil Nadu for the philatelists there.

Dhir has a collection of 5000 different mourning covers from 180 countries spanning a period of two hundred years.