Odisha to bring policy to settle disputes of Jagannath temple lands in 3 months: Minister

Bhubaneswar: The Odisha government will bring a new 'Uniform Policy' within three months to settle disputes involving lands belonging to Puri's Jagannath temple, Law Minister Prithviraj Harichandan informed the assembly on Saturday.

The Odisha government had brought a 'Uniform Policy' in 2003 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 who already have possession of the land for long years, he said.

"The previous government had stopped implementing the policy. Another revised Uniform Policy was brought in 2019. But, the 2019 policy also needs some revision. So, we will bring a fresh Uniform Policy over the next three months for settlement of the land disputes," the minister said.

For this, district-level committees led by the respective district collector and a high-level panel at Jagannath temple administration level have been formed, he said.

"We set a target to complete the land settlement process in the next two years," he further informed the House.

Harichandan said the money collected through the process will strengthen the foundation fund of the Jagannath temple.

He said a total of 60,426.943 acres of land in the name of Shree Jagannath Mahaprabhu Bije, Srikhetra Puri, have been identified in 24 of the 30 districts of Odisha.

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, he said.

The government is taking steps to collect RoR of the remaining land parcels, he said.

Similarly, 395.252 acres of land in six other states were identified in the name of Lord Jagannath, Harichandan said.

On the landed properties in other states, he said a maximum of 322.930 acres of land is in West Bengal followed by 28.218 acres in Maharashtra, 25.110 acres in Madhya Pradesh, 17.020 acres in Andhra Pradesh, 1.7 acres in Chhattisgarh and 0.274 acre in Bihar.

He further informed that a total of 169.86 acres of land belonging to Jagannath temple, Puri have also remained encroached in seven districts of Odisha -- Cuttack, Puri, Bhadrak, Kendrapara, Khurda, Balasore and Jajpur.

The minister said 974 encroachment cases have been lodged in different tehsils of the state to remove the illegal encroachments.

The cases were filed as per the provision of the Shri Jagannath Temple Act, 1955, after the conduct of a proper inquiry by SJTA officials, he added.