Odia Pua
Odia Pua is an Odia-language news title associated in this directory with Bhubaneswar, the capital of Odisha, and published online at odiapua.com. The title has a documented history that reaches beyond a single city. Reference listings describe Odia Pua as the first Odia newspaper printed and published from New Delhi, registered with the Registrar of Newspapers for India in 2003, and later available in a web form. Other reference summaries record branches in Bhubaneswar and Puri. That combination — a New Delhi print origin, branches in Odisha, and an Odia-language website presenting itself as a source of Odisha news — explains the character of the outlet. It is at once a community newspaper for Odia readers living outside Odisha and a digital portal carrying news from Odisha itself, in the language of the state.
Origins as an Odia newspaper from New Delhi
The best-documented part of the Odia Pua story is its print origin. A community description maintained by the title states, in summary, that Odia Pua was the first and only Odia newspaper printed and published from New Delhi, and that it later became available in a new web form. The media directory OMNESmedia gives a similar account, identifying Odia Pua as the first Odia newspaper printed and published from New Delhi and recording its registration with the Registrar of Newspapers for India in 2003. A separate reference summary of the title also gives 2003 as its founding year and notes branches in Bhubaneswar and Puri, naming Shyamsundar Sahoo as editor in 2020, with Manmohini Sahoo as assistant editor. Those details matter because they place Odia Pua in a specific niche: an Odia-language paper produced in the national capital for a readership whose home state lay hundreds of kilometres away.
Publishing an Odia newspaper from Delhi was a practical response to migration. Odia people have long moved to other parts of India for education and employment, and Delhi has its own Odia associations and cultural institutions. A newspaper in Odia, printed in the capital, gave that community news of Odisha and news of Odia life outside Odisha in its own language, at a time when Odia readers in Delhi could not rely on the Odisha editions of the large Odia dailies reaching them quickly.
The name and the audience it addresses
The name itself is a direct address to that audience. In Odia, pua means a son or boy, so “Odia Pua” reads roughly as “Odia son.” It is an affectionate, familiar form of address rather than a formal institutional name, and it signals that the paper was intended to speak to Odia readers as members of one community, whether they were living in Odisha, in Delhi, or elsewhere in India. Directory descriptions of non-resident Odia life make the same point about the title’s role, noting that Odia Pua gave news and happenings of non-resident Odias across the country.
That audience has two sides. One side is Odisha itself: readers in Bhubaneswar, Puri, Cuttack and the districts who want state news in Odia. The other side is the diaspora inside India: Odia families settled in Delhi and other cities who want to follow events at home and in their own community. A title that can serve both groups needs general state news as well as community news, and the listings for Odia Pua reflect that breadth, classifying its coverage as local and national and its news focus as general news, business, culture and sports.
The move to the web
Like many small Indian-language newspapers, Odia Pua extended itself online. Its own community description announced the paper in a new web form and gave odiapua.org as its website, inviting readers to send reports, articles and feature news to the New Delhi operation. The address listed in this directory, odiapua.com, presents the title in English as a source of “Odisha News in Odia Language.” The two addresses reflect successive web presences for the same title rather than two different publications.
The web form changed what the title could do. A printed community newspaper published from Delhi was limited by printing and distribution; a website could be read in Bhubaneswar on the day a story appeared, and by Odia readers anywhere else with an internet connection. It also allowed the title to publish short, frequently updated items of the kind readers expect from a news portal — government announcements, daily features and festival coverage — alongside the community material that had defined the print paper.
What the website published
The clearest surviving snapshot of odiapua.com’s content comes from listings that reproduced its front page in July 2022. The items shown there give a fair picture of the portal’s mix. A leading item reported a sanction from the Chief Minister’s Relief Fund for the construction of new cyclone and flood shelters in Odisha — a hard state-news story of direct relevance in a coastal state regularly exposed to cyclones and flooding. Alongside it sat a daily horoscope, a regular service feature in many Indian-language portals. Another item reported that Sini Shetty of Karnataka had been crowned Femina Miss India World 2022, a national entertainment and pageant story. A further item concerned Lord Jagannath at the Adapa Mandapa, part of the religious coverage surrounding Puri and the Jagannath tradition that is central to Odia public life.
Taken together, those four kinds of story — state government news, astrology, entertainment and Jagannath religion — are a representative cross-section of an Odia general portal. They also explain why the title is described in this directory in entertainment and lifestyle terms as well as news terms: for Odia readers, cinema, pageants, festivals, horoscopes and temple news are part of the same daily reading habit as politics and government announcements.
Entertainment, cinema and lifestyle coverage
Entertainment coverage in Odia has a natural home ground. Bhubaneswar, together with Cuttack, is the home of the Odia film industry, known as Ollywood, where most of the state’s film studios are situated. Odia cinema dates to Sita Bibaha in 1936, and the Government of Odisha recognised filmmaking as an industry in 1974 and established the Odisha Film Development Corporation in 1976. An Odia-language portal based around Bhubaneswar is therefore well placed to cover Odia films, actors, music and cultural events for readers who follow that industry in their own language.
The lifestyle side of the title follows the same pattern as its front page: daily horoscopes, festival and temple coverage, and cultural news. Odia culture is strongly present in Bhubaneswar itself, a city known as the Temple City of India, with historic temples built in the Kalinga style, and as a centre for Odissi, the classical dance form whose origins are traced to the temples of the region. Coverage of religious festivals, cultural programmes and entertainment in Odia speaks directly to that environment.
Bhubaneswar, Puri and the Odisha connection
The Bhubaneswar connection recorded for Odia Pua is significant. Bhubaneswar is the capital of Odisha, the seat of the state government whose announcements the portal carries, and one of the two main centres of the Odia media and film industries. Puri, the other branch location recorded for the title, is the home of the Jagannath Temple and the Rath Yatra, and the source of much of the religious news that Odia readers follow most closely. A title with a presence in those two cities, in addition to its New Delhi origin, covers the three poles of its readership’s life: government and work in the capital of Odisha, faith and tradition in Puri, and the diaspora community in the capital of India.
The language completes the connection. Odia is the official and most widely spoken language of Odisha, spoken by tens of millions of people. The modern state was formed in 1936 from predominantly Odia-speaking regions, and Bhubaneswar became its capital after 1948, succeeding Cuttack. Publishing in Odia is therefore not a translation choice for a title like Odia Pua; it is the basis of its identity.
Place in the Odia media landscape
Odia Pua occupies a small, specialised place in a crowded Odia media landscape. Odisha has large, long-established Odia dailies such as The Samaja, founded in 1919, as well as major titles including Sambad, Dharitri and Prameya, most of them published from within Odisha and focused on state coverage. Odia Pua’s distinction, as recorded in every directory description of it, is different: it began outside the state, in New Delhi, for Odia readers there, and it has been listed among Odia newspapers precisely as a community newspaper serving readers in Odisha and in the diaspora. Its web presence at odiapua.com, carrying general Odisha news in Odia, sits alongside that older community role rather than replacing it.
How to read it
Readers can access Odia Pua online through its website, odiapua.com, which presents Odisha news in the Odia language. Readers interested in the title’s community-newspaper side should note the distinction between the website’s general news mix — state news, entertainment, culture, sports and daily features such as horoscopes — and the print title’s original purpose of reporting Odia community life in New Delhi and among non-resident Odias. No subscription information is asserted here, as none was verified from the sources consulted for this profile.
Summary
Odia Pua is an Odia-language news title founded as a newspaper in 2003, described as the first Odia newspaper printed and published from New Delhi, with recorded branches in Bhubaneswar and Puri and a later life as a web portal. Its website, odiapua.com, carries Odisha news in Odia, with a verified front-page mix that has included state government news, cyclone and flood shelter announcements, daily horoscopes, national entertainment news and Jagannath religious coverage. Classified in directories under local and national coverage and general news, business, culture and sports, and described in this directory as a Bhubaneswar-based portal publishing Odia entertainment news, cinema coverage and lifestyle content, it remains a distinctive small title: a community newspaper for the Odia diaspora that became a general Odia news site for readers at home and away.
