Bhubaneswar, Aug. 3: Ahead of the urban elections next year, the state government is considering to announce major sops, especially giving ownership rights on land (land pattas) to slum dwellers, who are considered a major vote bank of the BJD.

During the last urban polls, the government had announced apartments for slum dwellers and work on a number of apartments has already begun.

"Work pertaining to issue of land pattas has already been finalised. But since the action may invite legal problems, the state government has sought the opinion of the advocate-general," a senior official told The Telegraph.

The revenue department and housing and urban development departments are jointly working on this.

Apart from this, the government has also decided to take up overall development of the urban local bodies under the Urban Transformation Initiative (Unnati) scheme.

"The urban elections of 2018 will be the semi-final before the final match in 2019. Taking this into account, we are very serious in our efforts to not the BJP to make inroads into the urban areas," said a senior BJD leader.

Chief minister Naveen Patnaik today launched the Unnati scheme to carry out all-round development of urban areas by synergising resources from various schemes and agencies and by providing critical gap funding.

"Under this initiative, my government has decided to provide 100 per cent piped water supply and LED street lighting to all streets and wards in all the urban areas of the state," said Naveen.

To promote energy efficiency in the state, Odisha today also entered into an MoU with Energy Efficiency Services Limited (ESSL) for implementation of street light national programme in 107 urban local bodies.

The conventional lights will be replaced in one year. The combined impact of the government's initiatives could help the state achieve energy savings to the tune of nearly 35.97 million KW annually, making a monetary saving of Rs 26.97 crore.

The housing and urban development department and EESL will invest around Rs 75 crore in next year for LED street lighting in Odisha.

Naveen also asked all the urban bodies to use social media extensively.

He also launched the " Mo Pride" online software monitoring tools for the urban local bodies.

On July 14, Naveen had announced " Ama sahar, ama unnati" (our town, our development) and asked his party functionaries to go to the people in every ward and every slum with the message of the successful implementation of various welfare and development schemes of his government and counter the "misinformation" campaign of Opposition parties.

Earlier, Naveen had also launched the " Ama gaon, ama bikash (our village, our development)" campaign to counter the BJP's "Mo booth, sabuthu majboot" programme.