About this stamp
Pilot and Statesman
India Post issued this ₹5 stamp on 5 March 2018, his birth anniversary, for Biju Patnaik (1916–1997), the pilot, freedom fighter and twice Chief Minister of Odisha. He was born at Cuttack on 5 March 1916 to Laxminarayan Patnaik and Ashalata Devi. Fascinated by flying, he joined the Royal Indian Air Force and later Indian National Airways as a pilot.
Daring Flights
In the Second World War he flew to help evacuate British families when Japan attacked Burma. In 1947 he flew the first Indian aircraft to land in Kashmir when Pakistan attacked, and during Indonesia’s war of independence he flew the Indonesian leaders, among them Prime Minister Sutan Sjahrir and Mohammad Hatta, from Jakarta to Delhi; Indonesia honoured him with the title “Bhumi Putra”. He took part in the Quit India Movement and was jailed for thirty months.
Odisha
He became Chief Minister on 23 June 1961 and again in 1990. In his first term Paradip port, the Balimela and Talcher power projects, the MIG factory at Sunabeda and many state corporations were set up, and he is called the founder of panchayat-level industry in Odisha. He also served as Union Minister for Steel and Mines and founded the Kalinga Prize for the popularisation of science, given through UNESCO. He died on 17 April 1997.
On the Stamp
His portrait in glasses, with industrial buildings behind and the years 1916–2016. It was designed by Brahm Prakash, with the cancellation by Alka Sharma; 606,500 were printed by wet offset at the Security Printing Press, Hyderabad.
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