Bhubaneswar, May 19: Politicians can be touchy about criticism. A professor of Calcutta’s Jadavpur University learnt this the hard way when he circulated a cartoon on Bengal chief minister, Mamta Banerjee. Now, a Facebook post has got a well-known Odia politician angry.

The controversy over an open letter, posted on the social networking site by Odisha-born professor Bhabani Shankar Nayak at Glasgow Caledonian University, Scotland, targeting state CPI(M) secretary Janardan Pati, has reached the law courts.

Yesterday, a local court issued a showcause notice to Facebook and Nayak, a native of Kendrapara district, for making “libellous comments” against Pati.

The civil judge (senior division), Bhubaneswar, Ratikanta Mohapatra, also issued notice to Kirthiga Reddy, head of Facebook India Private Limited based in Hyderabad.

While CPI(M) state secretariat member Dushmant Das filed the case in the civil judge court, Pati filed another defamation case against the professor in the sub-divisional judicial magistrate court.

The cases followed a complaint lodged by the state unit of the party with the cyber cell of state crime branch last week. “The civil court has asked them to showcause by July 4 as to why injunctions will not be allowed against them as prayed by the petitioner,” said Pati’s advocate Bibhu Prasad Tripathy.

Tripathy said the case was lodged when Facebook did not remove the offensive content from the site within 36 hours of a legal notice being served on it.

Das, in his petition, stated that derogatory statements had been posted on Facebook on April 9 and May 10 with the intention of damaging the reputation of his party and its state leadership.

Nayak, who has been out of the country since 2003, had posted an open letter to CPI(M) general secretary Prakash Karat on Facebook, alleging that the party had not done well in Odisha because of Pati’s inept handling of its affairs. Nayak, in the posting, claimed to be a member of the party.

Describing the Facebook posting as baseless, Pati said: “Ever since the all India party congress was held at Kozhikode from April 4 to 9, the professor had been making derogatory remarks against me on the social networking site. Though I do not have a Facebook account, my friends told me about such demeaning posts.”

“I came to know that Nayak had mentioned me as a businessman, feudal and corrupt person. The posts were offensive and menacing in character and without any basis in truth. It was against me as well as against my party,” he said. Pati said he did not know Nayak and he could not remember whether the professor was a member of the party.

Prof. Nayak said that he was yet to get the notice. Disputing the claim of Pati that he did not know him, he said, the party secretary was “joking. He knows me since 1994. I was a member of Students Federation of India (SFI) from 1994 to 2001 in Odisha. I was an active member of the party during my college and university days”.

“My focus is on the issues of corruption, ideological deviation, right wing, feudal and anti-communist practices of Pati. I have specific charges against him as the state secretary of the CPI(M), let him prove me wrong by calling for an independent inquiry,” said the professor, who claimed to be a member of the Communist Party of Britain these days.