Rourkela: The revenue department here has decided to provide records of rights to all the house owners in Civil Township and Koelnagar residential areas where most house-owners are lease deed holders. A lease hold plot or house does not have record of rights.

"I have initiated this process so that those house owners can have permanent land rights patta," said Rourkela tehsildar Biswaranjan Rath. "However, residents of other residential areas such as Chhend and Basanti Colony will not get the permanent land patta because these areas belong to Rourkela Development Authority and these colonies have been constructed by the housing board."

Since the ownership of these residential colonies lies with the Rourkela Development Authority and Odisha State Housing Board, Rath explained that he could not collect land revenue unless the owners had the record of rights. A lease deed has no legal validity in revenue record. "In order to get you into the revenue record, we have initiated this process and this will also help us to get the right revenue," said the tehsildar. Rath said the lease land holding and free hold land holdings were not equal. The majority of houses in Koelnagar and Civil Township do not have the status of free holding.

Speaking about the cost involved to provide the house-owners the record of rights, the tehsildar said: "The total amount could come up to Rs 500," said Rath, adding that the size of the house did not matter.

On how to go about the process, he said: "Just visit the revenue inspector's office in your locality and you will get the form, which is self-explanatory. You need to fill the form up and in case of any confusion, the officials at the officer will answer your queries."

Truck thieves held

Police have arrested two truck thieves and recovered the stolen truck from Sambalpur district. The accused, Bhimsen Tudu and Sanspras Khan, had stolen the truck on May 2 near Hatadihi College Chowk and had disposed it off after tampering its chassis number and assigning a fake registration number, said inspector of Nandipada police station Bijoy Mallick. The accused are being interrogated to find their possible connection with other cases.