Biju Patnaik: News

Bijayananda Patnaik was a pilot-turned-politician and a two-time Chief Minister of Odisha. Born in 1916 in Cuttack in pre-independent India, Patnaik studied aeronautics at the Aeronautical Training Institute of India and became a pilot. He took part in India's freedom struggle and was sentenced to prison for having participated in the Quit India Movement of 1942. He utilized his position as a pilot to fly Ram Manohar Lohia from Delhi to Calcutta in 1945 when the latter was undercover. In World War II, as a pilot for the Royal Indian Air Force, Patnaik undertook flying missions for supplying aid to the Allied forces. In 1948, he took a risky flight to skillfully escort Indonesian freedom fighters to Delhi for a meeting with Indian PM Jawaharlal Nehru and was awarded Indonesia's "Bhoomi Putra" honor for this act. Patnaik was a Member of the Odisha Assembly in the late 1940s and 1950s from Congress and in 1961 became the Chief Minister of the state. He was a Lok Sabha MP from Janata Party between 1977-85. He served his second term as Odisha's Chief Minister from 1990 to 1995. Patnaik passed away in 1997 at the age of 81. His son Naveen Patnaik is the CM of Odisha as of 2021.