BHUBANESWAR: The Odisha Government has won the World Habitat Award, a global recognition, for its ambitious initiative, Jaga Mission under which 52,682 urban poor families living in the slums have been granted land rights certificate.
This award is given by World Habitat, a UK-based organisation, in partnership with UN-Habitat, every year, in recognition of innovative, outstanding, and revolutionary ideas, projects, and programmes from across the world.
Jaga Mission is acclaimed as the World’s largest slum land titling project, benefiting a million urban poor living in the slums, with promises to provide “self-respect and freedom from the perpetual fear of eviction”.
The Mission is being executed in collaboration with Tata Trusts and Norman Foster Foundation. The State Government had rolled out the project on May 7, 2018, a first of its kind in the country, to give land titles to slum dwellers.
Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik had handed over land titles to 2,000 slum dwellers from nine urban local bodies at Chhatrapur in Ganjam district in the presence of Tata Trusts Chairman Ratan Tata and noted British architect Norman Foster.
So far, 1725 slums have been surveyed under the project using drones and GIS technology. Besides, transformation of 255 slums into liveable habitat is also under implementation.
Adoption of state-of-art technology combined with extensive community participation has resulted in dispute and litigation-free implementation in a time bound manner.
The Chief Minister in a tweet congratulated the housing and urban development department and the partners Tata Trusts and Norman Foster Foundation after declaration of the award.
Chairman of Tata Trusts Ratan Tata also congratulated the Chief Minister and his team for the award.
Recently, the project was also awarded the India Geospatial Excellence Award for technological innovation in transforming lives of urban poor.
Slum benefits
2018the first of its kind project in the country launched
2,000slum dwellers get land titles
1,725slums surveyed under the project
255slums to be transformed into liveable habitats
