Bhubaneswar: Following the Right of Way policy, the state government has mooted another scheme to ease the process of land acquisition vis-a-vis execution of under-ground infrastructure projects in urban areas.
The housing and urban development department has drafted the new scheme called Right of User in Privately-owned Land Policy 2017 to acquire private land for implementation of projects like laying of water, sewer and industrial waste lines.
As per the draft policy, the government will acquire private land for such infrastructure projects from owner of the land on a lease basis and compensate the owner as per the market price. The land owner would not lose his/her property. The acquired land will remain with the land owner.
The objective is to provide an enabling framework for acquiring rights of user over private land by mutual agreement between the owner of the land and the state government. This will help improve the urban infrastructure by eliminating chances of any hurdle or delay, sources said.
As per the present rules, the government has to acquire the private land for execution of such projects. In urban areas like Bhubaneswar, acquiring a small piece of land is costly and difficult. In a bid to facilitate such moves, the government has drafted the new rules.
This new scheme will ease the process of implementation of smaller projects in urban areas such as the ones for laying of sewers, construction of manholes, laying of underground pipeline, cable or duct for carrying water, sewage, industrial waste etc, and for construction, repair, maintenance, examination, alternation and removal of the same.
The draft policy says that if government agencies take a smaller portion of the land for any such project, it would pay 25 per cent of the market value of the land to the owner. And if the government’s project affected the owner’s right of enjoyment in that land, the government can compensate a maximum of 100 per cent of the land value.
The draft policy has been approved by the revenue department and now sent to the finance department for its approval.
Earlier, the government had laid down uniform guidelines for grant of permission for Right-of-Way (RoW) and Right-of-User (RoU) on government land for laying underground pipelines for carrying of water, gas, oil, electricity, industrial waste etc.
If the pipeline is laid within one district, the concerned collector will act as the competent authority. If the pipeline passes through more than one district but within one revenue division, the concerned RDC will be the competent authority.
The government has also prescribed deadlines for granting of RoW. If the case comes under one district, the concerned collector will have to issue the RoW within 45 days, while in any other case, the RoW must be issued within two months.
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