Sea-erosion hit Satabhaya village in Kendrapara. Telegraph picture

Kendrapara, June 2: The revenue administration department of this coastal district has stopped the exercise of periodic collection of land revenue cess from landowners in a cluster of erosion-hit coastal villages.

Official sources said as the areas in and around Satabhaya are hit by sea erosion, it has been decided to ease the people from taxation burden.

“Neither we are asking the landowners in Satabhaya Gram Panchayat to pay the cess, nor do we issue official notices for non-payment related penalty,” said Brahmananda Behera, block development officer, Rajnagar.

Technically, it does not amount to waiving the cess. Waiving of tax needs sanction from the state government. Keeping in view the fact that landed property is getting decimated every year with advancing sea, it’s quite unrealistic asking the local residents to pay cess, Behera said.

Besides, the local settlers are going to be relocated to a resettlement colony near Bagapatia within a year. After this area is freed of human settlement, the state forest department would remain the custodian of Satabhaya region. Thus there is no logic in asking the would-be-displaced landowners for land cess, Behera added.

Thus, the Gupti revenue circle has stopped the annual tax collection drive in these vulnerable coastal villages, said the officials.

Sea has been menacingly crawling towards human habitations in this part. The furious sea has advanced as much as 5km into this gram panchayat in the past three-and-half decades. Hamlets, places of human habitations and agriculture land are now under sea’s lap, while the local revenue records are yet to make alteration on the changing topography of the far-flung pockets such as Satabhaya, Gobindapur and Kanhupur.

Official sources said it has become imperative now to waive the tax, as majority of landowners were dispossessed of their cultivable land. For a year or so, revenue collection has come to a standstill with almost ‘zero’ collection.

“People here are no more receiving the land cess notices. The revenue inspector is also no more making his periodic visit to our gram panchayat,” said Sashmita Das, sarpanch, Satabhaya Gram Panchayat.

It is also a fact that the sea has eaten into sizeable stretch and length of land in the said region. Thus it does not appear logical to impose cess on these stretches firmly taken possession by the mighty sea.

Quoting official sources, the state revenue administration department has taken up the proposal for land tax remission in 2003.

But since then, it languished in cold storage following bureaucratic red tape. After the relocation of villagers was finalised, land cess collection has entirely been stopped, said officials.

Flattened by fast advancing sea, over 200 families of Satabhaya cluster of hamlets are literally living on the edge with continuous shrinkage putting the entire area in ‘danger zone’ category.

Five other hamlets have already been gobbled up in earlier decades and experts are of the view that the sea, sooner or the later would devour the remaining tracts of human civilisation in Satabhaya.