Rabi Ray

Rabi Ray (26 November 1926 – 6 March 2017) was an Indian socialist politician, a Gandhian, a speaker of the Lok Sabha and a former Union minister. He hailed from Odisha. He joined the Socialist Party in 1948, and later became member of the Samyukta Socialist Party, the Janata Party and the Janata Dal.

Early life Ray was born on 26 November 1926 at Bhanaragarh village in the Puri district of Orissa, He earned his B.A. Honours in History from the Ravenshaw College in Cuttack and later studied law at the Madhusudan Law College in Cuttack. He was a member of the National Executive of the Socialist Party during that period. Later, in 1960, he became the General Secretary of the party for about a year.

In 1967, he was elected to the 4th Lok Sabha from Puri constituency in Orissa. In the 4th Lok Sabha, he was the leader of the Parliamentary Group of the Samyukta Socialist Party (SSP). In 1974, he was elected to the Rajya Sabha from Orissa and he completed his term in Rajya Sabha in 1980. He was the Union minister of Health and Family Welfare in the Morarji Desai Ministry from January 1979 to January 1980. Cabinet Minister Subramanian Swamy threatened Rabi Ray in his chambers to send him to jail, Swamy was reacting to Ray's unwillingness to give 37 Janata Dal (S) MPs more time to explain why some of them should not be disqualified. But Ray unseated those MPs. He regularly contributed articles on contemporary political and social issues to various leading journals in Oriya, Hindi and English.

Awards

Light Of Truth, 2002 (Rabi Ray, received the award on behalf of the people of India during the closing ceremony of the Tibetan Festival of Compassion on 18 December 2002.) Shanti Doot International Award - the honour is conferred by the World Peace Movement Trust India. Kalinga Ratna, 2008