Popular west Odisha leader, loved rifles: Who was Odisha Health Minister Naba Kishore Das?

At the start of his political career, Das was a Congressman. He tried his luck in electoral politics for the first time in 2004, contesting the Jharsuguda Assembly seat for the party. Though he lost to the BJD’s Kishore Mohanty, he polled 50,136 votes.

During his Congress stint, he was one of the three working presidents for the state’s western region. Known for his organisational skills and socio-political understanding of the region, Das developed a strong support base in several Assembly constituencies in Sambalpur, Sundargarh, and Jharsuguda.

Das’s luck turned five years later as he won the Jharsuguda seat and retained it in the following two Assembly elections, the third time for the BJD that he had joined in January 2019 ahead of the Assembly elections as the Congress’s electoral footprint shrank.

Das was one of the richest Cabinet ministers in the Naveen Patnaik government. In an annual property declaration in 2021, he mentioned that as on December 31 of that year he had assets worth Rs 34 crore. In his annual property statement submitted in September last year, Das said he owned 70 vehicles, mostly commercial, including a Mercedes. He also said he possessed a revolver, a double-barrel gun, and a rifle. Once when asked about his love for rifles, Das said he got an all-India licence for revolvers in 1984 when he was a student and “kept the rifles for fancy and not for protection”. Das has properties in New Delhi, Kolkata, Bhubaneswar, and Jharsuguda.

Last week, the minister made news after he donated a costly gold pitcher to the Shani Shingnapur temple in Ahmednagar, Maharashtra. Though reports suggested it was worth Rs 1 crore, Das later clarified that it cost Rs 10 lakh. He had also made headlines in December 2015 after he was suspended from the Assembly for a week for allegedly watching objectionable clips in the House.