Kendrapara: Over the years, the inhabitants of sea erosion prone Satabhaya have been losing their land to the marauding sea but the local revenue department has recently issued notices to them for collecting land cess.
As per the notices, the department will register certificate cases under the Orissa Public Demand Recovery (OPDR) Act if the residents fail to pay the cess.
Several acres of land were devoured by the sea while large tracts of farmland have become sand-cast, but the Gupti revenue circle under Rajnagar tehsil is yet to make revision of the land settlement, locals said.
According to official sources, during the last four decades, about 4,300 acres of land have been devoured by the sea while nearly 2,500 acres of land, including 2,150 acres of government land, in Satabhaya gram panchayat have turned barren due to either ingress of saline water or sand casting. There is hardly any cultivable land left in the panchayat comprising villages of Satabhaya, Kanhupur, Rabindrapali and Gobindpur.
“May ancestral land is now somewhere in the sea floor. In our village, saline water has robbed the agricultural value of land while sand dunes have wiped the land’s boundary from the map. But people continue to pay rents for non-existent land with a hope that the government would someday compensate their loss of livelihood by giving equal amount of land they now possess in revenue records,” said Nalini Ranjan Biswal, a resident of Satabhaya.
According to Sudarshan Rout, the coordinator of Satabhaya Rehabilitation Colony, villagers are paying rent for non-existent land as the government insists on updated land records before issuing resident, income or caste certificates.
Settlement of land in the panchayat was last conducted in 1988-1989. Since then, no fresh survey has been conducted to measure the existing land in the sea erosion-hit villages. Revenue law binds the local revenue department to collect cess. “The local administration is not empowered to waive land cess though the administration is aware of the fact that the sea has dispossessed people of their ancestral land. So for remission, it needs approval from the state government,” said Khirod Behera, tehsildar of Rajnagar.
According to Rashmi Ranjan Mallick, the revenue inspector of Gupti, the crawling sea has consistently been eating up agriculture and homestead land. It is quite unrealistic to ask the local people to pay cess. However as some people are paying the tax, the department has served notices on those landowners who have defaulted in cess payment, he said.
Collector Debaraj Senapati said the district administration is going to send a proposal to revenue divisional commission (central) and member, board of revenue, for cess remission. Rajnagar tehsildar has been directed to compile a comprehensive report to expedite the cess remission, he added. PNN
