Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government will come up with a new ‘Uniform Policy’ within three months to streamline the management of land belonging to Shree Jagannath Temple at Puri.
Responding to a query from BJP MLA Durga Charan Tanti, Law Minister Prithviraj Harichandan informed the state Assembly that all disputes of the temple land will be settled within the next two years.
The minister further stated that the previous government had stopped implementing the 2023 policy to provide temple land of up to 100 decimals on a concessional rate and over 100 decimals at the benchmark value or market rate to people already in possession of such lands for long years. “This policy was amended in 2019 but further modifications are needed. A new policy will be prepared and placed before the state cabinet within the next three months,” he said.
District-level committees led by the respective district collector and a high-level panel at Jagannath temple administration level have been formed for the purpose, he added.
Harichandan said the money collected through the process will strengthen the foundation fund of the Jagannath Temple.
A total of 60,426.943 acres of land in the name of Shree Jagannath Mahaprabhu Bije, Srikhetra Puri, have been identified in 24 districts. Of these, the Shree Jagannath Temple Administration (SJTA) has received the final Record of Rights (RoR) over 38,061.892 acres of land and the digitisation process of the land records is nearly complete. Revision of the title deeds for the remaining 22,000 acres is also in progress. Another 395.252 acres of land of Mahaprabhu in six states – West Bengal (322.930 acre), Maharashtra (28.218 acre), Madhya Pradesh (25.110 acre), Andhra Pradesh (17.020 acre), Chhattisgarh (1.7 acre) and Bihar (0.274 acre), have been identified, he said
Eviction process is on to reclaim 169.861 acres of land under encroachment in seven districts – Cuttack, Puri, Bhadrak, Kendrapara, Khurda, Balasore and Jajpur- by filing 974 cases in the respective tehsildar courts under Section 16A(I) of the Shree Jagannath Temple Act, 1955, he added.