Naveen launches town planning scheme, gives RoRs to villagers

BHUBANESWAR: Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik on Thursday launched the first town planning scheme initiated by the Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA) by distributing land pattas to residents of four villages on the outskirts of the Capital city.

The Chief Minister distributed Records of Rights (RoR) to the villagers of Sahajpur, Nargoda, Sijuput and Paikarapur through video-conferencing. Stating that community partnership and citizen involvement are central to city development, Naveen said that the State government gives high priority to such partnership models with active involvement of citizens. “We should become a role model in urban development,” he said. 

Cities are the growth engines of our economy, the Chief Minister said and added, “We have to plan our cities in a sustainable manner and enable an organic growth while ensuring safety nets for the vulnerable sections.” 

He said, the town planning scheme will herald a new era of planned development. It will be implemented in a time bound manner so that model can be created for the rest of the cities to emulate. He lauded BDA for initiating the scheme in partnership with the land owners and said, this is a fair, transparent and practical way of expanding the cities in a planned manner.

With this scheme, the BDA will now adopt the land pooling method instead of the traditional land acquisition for infrastructure development and urban growth in Bhubaneswar and its outskirts. In the first phase, 358 numbers of RoR will be distributed to the land owners of Sahajpur village. 

Under the scheme, BDA will take over 40 per cent of the area of land owners covering 746.70 acres from four Mouzas , Sahajpur, Naragoda, Sijupur and Paikarapur. In lieu of this, the BDA would not give any compensation but will ensure infrastructure development on the remaining 60 per cent area.

Urban Development Minister Pratap Jena said once implemented, the city will be able to obtain land for public purposes such as low-income housing, open spaces, roads, utilities, and social amenities, avoiding much of the haphazard expansion that take place in and around Bhubaneswar.

Besides, the scheme will help in increasing street density in the city, improve accessibility, reduce average trip lengths and reduce road congestion.

After getting the State government nod on the final proposal, the Revenue and Disaster Management department has initiated the record correction of final plots in favour of land owners. The record correction for other villages, Naragoda, Sijuput and Paikarapur under preliminary scheme no. 1 is under process and would be completed soon.