BHUBANESWAR: After ensuring land rights to slum dwellers, the State Government has initiated a move to regularise unobjectionable encroachments of Government land by the landless poor in urban areas.
The move to regularise unobjectionable encroachments on excess vacant land vested with the government under Urban Ceiling Act was discussed at high level meeting chaired by Revenue and Disaster Management Minister Maheswar Mohanty here on Thursday.
“It has been brought to the notice of the Government that a large number of families have encroached government land and constructed houses. They have represented to the government to regularise these encroachments as many of them are landless poor ,” sources familiar with the matter told The Express.
Practices adopted in other States in the matter of regularisation of encroachments of government land for housing purpose was discussed.
The Revenue Minister asked Housing and Urban Development (H&UD) department to prepare a draft bill taking into consideration the existing practices in other States and submit it to the Government for further discussion.“As it was a preliminary discussion on Thursday nothing concrete has emerged. The H&UD Department has been asked to submit a draft bill for further discussion,” Mohanty said.
Such regularisation of unobjectionable encroachments of government land in urban areas will remove the hardships of poor people and enable the government to meet its objective of providing houses to all, sources in H&UD Department said.The fresh move of the State Government came after enactment of Odisha Land Rights to Slum Dwellers Act, 2017 which guarantees land rights to urban poor households in municipalities and Notified Area Councils (NACs) while the economically weaker section (EWS) in five municipal corporations are entitled to get property rights of the dwelling unit under the Odisha Municipal Corporation (Amendment) Act.
Under the Act, the government had promised to give 45 square metre of land to landless slum dwellers in municipal towns and 60 square metre in NACs (smaller towns). This move of the Government has received severe flak from Congress and BJP. While the Congress sees this another attempt by the Government to regularise all unauthorised occupation of Government land, the BJP said this is a move to encourage land grabbers.