Former Odisha Minister and seven-time MLA Damodar Rout passed away at a private hospital in Bhubaneswar in the early hours of Friday. He was 81.
Rout had suffered cardiac arrest on March 18 and was being treated in Capital Hospital of Bhubaneswar.
Rout was popularly known as Dama Babu, and he had closely worked with former chief minister Biju Patnaik under whom he served as Panchayati Raj minister.
In 1997, he was among those who started Biju Janata Dal (BJD) and soon worked as minister under Naveen Patnaik since 2000 working in various departments such as health, panchayatiraj, cooperation, agriculture, culture and excise.
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Rout, a trained veterinary doctor by profession, had joined politics in 1970s and had contested his first election in 1974 on Utkal Congress ticket when he lost to Loknath Choudhury of CPI by less than 15,000 votes from Erasama assembly constituency. He was first elected to the Odisha Assembly in 1977 on a Janata Party ticket.
He had been elected to the Assembly seven times—five times from Erasama constituency and twice from Paradip—in between 1977 and 2014.
Apart from his traditional Erasama seat, the seasoned politician had fought against Congress heavyweight Basanta Biswal from Tirtol constituency in Jagatsinghpur in 1995 Assembly election. He was defeated in both seats.
He joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in 2019, a few months after his expulsion from BJD and unsuccessfully contested the 2019 Assembly election. However, he quit BJP in October 2019.
On January 1 this year, Patnaik revoked the veteran leader’s expulsion.
Rout is survived by his son Sambit, BJD MLA from Paradip and daughter Preetinanda Routray, a corporator from Ward no. 6 under Bhubaneswar Municipal Corporation (BMC).
Following his death, CM Patnaik wrote that Rout’s death was an irreparable loss to Odisha politics.
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