Former Odisha Min Damodar Rout Departs from Mortal World

Bhubaneswar: Veteran leader and former Odisha Minister Damodar Rout breathed his last at a private hospital in Bhubaneswar on Friday morning at the age of 81. Doctors had declared him brain dead on Thursday.

The senior BJD leader suffered a massive cardiac arrest on March 18 night. From then on he was on a life support system at a private hospital in Bhubaneswar.

Rout was a veterinary doctor by profession. He entered politics in the 1970s and was elected to the Odisha Assembly for the first time in 1977.

He has been elected as an MLA seven times in the past, five times from Erasama in Jagatsinghpur and twice from Paradip, in between 1977 and 2014.

From 1990 to 1995, he was the Panchayati Raj Minister in the Janata Dal government under legendary leader Biju Patnaik.

Rout later joined the Biju Janata Dal (BJD), when the regional party was formed after Biju Patnaik’s demise in 1997.

In Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik’s led government, this veteran leader served as a minister several times managing portfolios like Health, Excise and Agriculture.

Rout joined the BJP in 2019, a few months after his expulsion from BJD on grounds of ‘anti-party’ activities. He unsuccessfully contested the 2019 Assembly elections from Erasama-Balikuda constituency even though the ruling BJD fielded his son Sambit Routray from the Paradip segment.

The BJD revoked his expulsion on January 1, 2024. Rout’s wife Snehalata Mohapatra, a retired teacher had died earlier. He is survived by his son Sambit, an MLA from Paradip and daughter Preetinanda Routray, a corporator of the Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC).