Bhubaneswar: The general administration department and the development authority have decided to conduct online auction of lands for schools, colleges and hospitals.

Earlier, the authorities had followed the same procedure for star and affordable hotel projects in the city and tasted success in it.

The authorities have decided to create a land bank for the same and do the online auction of the plots. One of the lenient features the authorities will adopt here is to provide the land to the executors of various private projects on the benchmark prices fixed by the state government.

To proceed with the initiative, the general administration and public grievance department has written to the housing and urban development department to start creating the land bank. A proposal will have to be moved by the housing and urban development department to allot lands to the Bhubaneswar Development Authority.

It has been decided that the housing and urban development department will move a proposal for allotment of government land to the authorities for development of social infrastructure such as hotels and schools, said director of estates Hemant Kumar Padhi to housing and urban development department commissioner G. Mathi Vathanan.

"We have been constantly conducting enforcement drives to free government land from squatters in various parts of the city. It has not yet been calculated, but we have succeeded in freeing huge amount of land. We have now decided to utilise those for developing social infrastructure," said an official of housing and urban development department.

The development authority had last month notified to conduct online auction of land for development of the hotel projects in the city. The authorities get good response from the bidders since the plots have been decided to be provided on the price fixed by the government, which is much lower than the market price. "If they do provide us land at prices fixed by the government, they will definitely receive overwhelming response since more people can take part in it," said Dibyansh Ojha, a bidder, who had taken part in the previous auction.