A bird’s eye view of Bhubaneswar. Picture by Sanjib Mukherjee

Bhubaneswar, July 4: The Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA) has submitted a proposal, according to which, people giving their land for the proposed South City Satellite Township on the city outskirts would get a developed piece of land apart from some monetary relief.

In the normal land acquisition process, owner of the land becomes landless. “This new method will not only help the owners, but also ensure that there is a return for their contribution. The land owners will get plots or developed things such as, shops or other set up, near the site to ensure monthly return,” said vice-chairman of the development authority Deoranjan Kumar Singh.

“In fact, we are going to implement the proposal imbibing the best of the traditional acquisition process and from the model adopted by one Magarpatta township near Pune. The farmland owners have formed a company there to provide infrastructure facilities to real estate developers, IT biggies and commercial complexes with regular monthly return from the shares of their individual land ownership. Regarding proposal for the South City project, the return will come as another piece of developed land or a real estate property, which will provide ensured returns just like the Magarpatta township,” Singh said.

The self-sufficient integrated township of South City on an area of 1,200 acres will be a model urban settlement where the development authority has so far acquired 100 acres. The state government has started acquiring more land and, for this, the revenue department published an advertisement on July 2 to get an area of 190.83 acres from Jagasara mouza under Jatni police limits in Khurda district.

According to the authority sources, while the Tata Consulting Engineers is the agency to make the master plan for the integrated township, Infrastructure Leasing and Financial Services Limited (an infrastructure development company) is the transaction manager for the process of the development.

“South City will get land from seven different mouzas. Jagasara will have the largest share with 579.56 acres. Madanpur to have 204.44 acres, Kaimatia 73.21 acres, Paikrapur 317.98 acres, Kaimatiapatna 3.01 acres, Bidyadharpur 7.01 acres and Jagasarapatna 1.17 acres and after completion there will be 20,000 affordable houses for one lakh population. The township will have 20 to 30 per cent houses reserved for the economically weaker sections, the lower and the middle income groups having at least 10 per cent share each for their categories. Even there might be an increase in the percentage of houses earmarked for the middle class as per the demand pattern,” a senior officer of the authority said.

Apart from the unique rehabilitation and resettlement (RoR) proposal, the development authority is also mulling a plan to undertake a pilot project as prescribed under the Town Planning Schemes under Chapter VI of the Orissa Development Act (ODA), 1982. According to the plan, no one will lose anything owing to development activities. Rather the area has to bear the burden and by shrinking the land areas from the individual ownership, land will be reclaimed for infrastructure such as, roads. The scheme is popular in state such as, Gujarat. However, despite being with the OD Act, the scheme is yet to get a kickstart in the state.

“In reality, from an area of say 300 acres of a development project, 40 to 50 per cent go for infrastructure needs. However, with the infrastructure, if we want to lay road in an area as per the traditional land acquisition practice in which one loses his land in exchange of money, another land owner gets a 10 times hike of his land price when the new road passes by his plot. In the scheme, after earmarking the land for infrastructure every land owner donates a small portion from his land and all the plots get rescheduled once again, so that no one is displaced from the project,” said Singh.

Though the place has not been identified, the pilot project is likely to start on the city outskirts, as the rescheduling of land is possible there. Rescheduling of land is not possible in the core city area where the construction activity is already at its peak and there is no scope to change the concrete structures.