Nandini Satpathy

Nandini Satpathy (9 June 1931 – 4 August 2006) was an Indian politician and author. She was the Chief Minister of Odisha from June 1972 to December 1976.

Satpathy was born on 9 June 1931 and grew up in Pithapur, Cuttack, India. She was the eldest daughter of Kalindi Charan Panigrahi; Satpathy's uncle Bhagavati Charan Panigrahi founded the Odisha branch of the Communist Party of India.

At the age of eight (8) in year 1939 she had been mercilessly beaten up by British Police for pulling down the Union Jack as well as for pasting hand written anti British Raj posters on the walls of Cuttack. The same was widely discussed then and the same had worked as fuel in the fire for the struggle of Freedom of India from British Raj.

While at Ravenshaw College pursuing her Master of Arts in Odia, she got involved with the Communist Party's student wing, the Student Federation. In 1951, a student protest movement began in Odisha against rising college education costs, it later turned into a national youth movement. Satpathy was a leader of this movement,police lathi charged the protestors and Nandini Satpathy was severely injured in the sane. She was jailed, along with many others. In the jail she met Devendra Satpathy, another Student Federation member and the man who she later married. (He was later elected for two terms to the lower house from Dhenkanal .

In 1962, the Congress party was dominant in Orissa; the Orissa State Legislative Assembly of 140 members had over 80 from the Congress party. At a national level, there was a movement to have more women representatives in the Indian Parliament. The Assembly elected Satpathy (then president of the Women's Forum) to the upper house of India's Parliament, where she served two terms. After Indira Gandhi became Prime Minister of India in 1966, Satpathy became a Minister attached to the Prime Minister, with her specific portfolio being the Ministry of Information and Broadcasting.

Satpathy returned to Odisha in 1972, due to vacancies caused by Biju Patnaik and others departing from the Congress party, and became the Chief Minister of Odisha. During the Emergency of 25 June 1975 – 21 March 1977, she imprisoned a number of notable individuals, including Nabakrusna Choudhuri and Rama Devi; however, Odisha had the least number of prominent individuals jailed during the Emergency, and Satpathy otherwise attempted to resist Indira Gandhi's policies during the Emergency. Satpathy left office in December 1976. During the general election in 1977, she was part of a group of protesters led by Jagjivan Ram, which became the Congress for Democracy party.

Satpathy returned to the Congress party in 1989, on the request of Rajiv Gandhi. The Congress party was unpopular in Odisha as a whole, due to its two term miss rule (primarily under Janaki Ballabh Patnaik as Chief Minister). She was elected as a member of the State Legislative Assembly from Gondia , Dhenkanal and remained in the Assembly until 2000, when she decided to retire from politics; she did not contest the 2000 elections. She was not influential in and was critical of the Odisha branch of the Congress party.

Court Case

In 1977, Satpathy was accused of corruption and a police investigation started into possible violations of the Prevention of Corruption Act in force at that time. During the investigation, she was interrogated on a number of questions in written form. She refused to answer any questions; her attorney argued that Article 20 (3) of the Indian Constitution protected her against forced self-incrimination. The court agreed, strengthening the rights of the accused with a recognition of the right to a lawyer and the right against self-incrimination; it moreover held that women have the right to be questioned at their homes in the presence of male relatives, have the right to be brought to the police station only after a formal arrest, and have the right to be searched only by other women. Over the next 18 years, Satpathy won all of the cases against her.

Satpathy was a writer in the Odia language; her work has been translated and published into a number of other languages. She received the 1998 Sahitya Bharati Samman Award for her contributions to Oriya literature. Her last major literary work was translating Taslima Nasreen's Lajja into Oriya.

She died on 4 August 2006 at her home in Bhubaneswar.

In 2006 a social cause organisation, the Srimati Nandini Satpathy Memorial Trust (SNSMT), was established in her memory. It is one of the leading social cause organisations of Odisha albeit India.

Her younger out of the two sons Tathagata Satpathy was a 4 time Member of Parliament from Biju Janata Dal and the editor of daily newspapers — Dharitri and OrissaPOST.

9 June, the birthday of late Smt. Nandini Satpathy, has been declared as National Daughters' Day - Nandini Diwas. Nandini and Diwas are two Sanskrit words which mean daughter and day, respectively.

7th National Daughters day was celebrated in 2013 and Governor of Rajashthan was the chief guest in the event.