Government 'squats on private land;' renders Kandhamal man landless

In an irony of sorts, a man has been forced to live in a thatched hut on someone else's farmland, while a government school stands on his father’s 2.5-acre land. He is forced to live a pathetic life as all his efforts to get back his ancestral land have proved futile. 

At a time when the government is distributing land rights to landless people, in Kandhamal, it has allegedly encroached upon a private land, forcing the landowner to live like a landless person. 

Government records show Jayadev Nayak, the father of 60-year-old Rabindra Nayak, a resident of Raikia in Kandhamal district, is the owner of the land measuring around 2.5 acres on which the Government Project Upper Primary School stands. Rabindra has since been depositing the land tax (khajana) of the mentioned land. But the irony is that Rabindra is living like a landless person in a hut built on a villager’s farmland.

“Despite having land of my own, I am living like a landless person. My family is living in a hut built on another’s farmland.  I am earning my livelihood by selling firewood.  The government has established a school on my ancestral land. My father has not donated that piece of land to the government and the latter has set up the school on its own,” alleged Rabindra. 

“To get my ancestral land back, I have visited almost all the government officials starting from the tehsildar to the RI but they are offering only lip service,” he added.

When contacted over his mobile phone, block education officer (BEO) Hadibandhu Behera said, “Since that is an ST plot, we will hand over the land. We are presently looking for a suitable land to shift the school. Once the school is shifted, we will hand the land over to him.”