BHUBANESHWAR: In a move to boost land revenue and bring uniformity to the valuation system, the state government has rolled out a comprehensive framework for the fixation of the market value of immovable property.
The move particularly focuses on urban areas and roadside plots as well as land adjacent to national and state highways, project areas and commercial plots.
As per the new framework prepared by the Revenue and Disaster Management department, the market value of immovable properties must be revised once every two years and implemented with effect from April 1 of the biennial year.
The revised market value standard operating procedure (SOP) will form the basis for stamp duty and registration fee collection, a key source of revenue for the State.
The move is expected to avoid delays in revision and ensure that property values reflect ground realities, especially in rapidly urbanising and infrastructure-heavy zones.
In order to operationalise the revision exercise, the government has prescribed the constitution of valuation committees at both district and sub-district levels within a fixed timeline.
The SOP has stressed meticulous collection and analysis of field-level data. Land registering officers and tehsildars have been directed to furnish sale statistics and land-related data to the valuation committee in prescribed formats for both urban areas and rural areas.
"Tehsildars have been tasked with guiding revenue inspectors to ensure accurate and exhaustive field data collection. They will ensure that all revenue plots of each village are included in the database with no omissions or duplication of plot numbers," said an official of the Revenue department.
The state government has also introduced an elaborate classification system to capture variations in land potential and locational advantage.
Agricultural land in rural areas has been categorised into roadside plots, interior plots and project area plots. Roadside agricultural land has been further divided based on proximity to national highways, state highways, expressways and other major roads, with zoning based on distance bands of up to 50 metres and 50 to 200 metres.
Non-agricultural land has been classified into residential, commercial, institutional and industrial categories, while plots not fitting into any category will be treated as miscellaneous.
The interior agricultural plots, located beyond 200 metres from any road, have been split into irrigated and non-irrigated land. Project area plots will include economic activities such as SEZs and industries, or future projects like highways, railways and economic corridors.
Once data is compiled, the district-level committee will meet to propose market value guidelines for different categories of land and structures. The committee will arrive at the market value of different categories/groups of plots of land, taking into account different categories of data/sale statistics.
Where more than one sale transaction is available for any category, the market value will be calculated by taking into account the average of 50 per cent of the documents having the highest sale instances registered in the sub-registrar offices concerned during the last two years.
"In urban areas, auction values will be averaged rather than adopting the highest bid. Similarly, for land purchased from development authorities or housing boards, the average purchase value will be taken," the official added.