Homestead-less survey to miss Aug 10 deadline

Bhubaneswar: The Revenue and Disaster Management department’s survey order to enumerate homestead-less families in rural areas of the State is likely to miss the August deadline considering the pace of the work and the number of days given to district collectors to complete it.

In June 19 letter, the department has asked all the additional district magistrates to identify homestead-less families by August 10 so that sheltering strategies can be drawn up. But it is alleged that the time period allowed for the process is much too less for conducting such a vast survey.

“The tehsildars and sub-collectors will be responsible to do verification of the eligibility in 100 per cent cases. The additional district magistrate will test check the survey work. The collectors may do some test check in a few cases,” the department directed issuing a notification.

The need to go for a fresh survey was felt after the State Government revised the annual income ceiling from Rs 24,000 to Rs 40,000 for homestead-less persons last month. Officials said the number of homestead-less families is slated to rise and they will be eligible for land.

“Since the government has accorded priority to shelter security, it is necessary to go for a further survey on campaign mode to identify the total number of homestead-less families,” a senior officer said.

Notably, in the recently published Socio-Economic and Caste Census report, 54% families of rural Odisha are homestead-less.