Drones used for land settlement for slum dwellers

Bhubaneswar: In just over a month of enactment of Odisha Land Rights to Slum Dwellers Bill, the State government has initiated the process of settlement to provide land and property rights to the economically weaker section in urban bodies by using drone technology.

The government has put to use drone technology for the first time to identify and delineate land in the slum areas in Konark on a pilot basis. In second phase, drones will be mobilised for the identification of slums in six ULBs of Ganjam district, which will kick start from October 27.

Drones will provide an aerial video evidence of the exact size of slums and the area covered by the dwellers.

The government which will start distributing patta to beneficiaries in all seven urban areas from January 1,  2018, has targeted to deliver over 1 lakh pattas by June 2018.

Odisha Assembly had passed the Odisha Land Rights to Slum Dwellers Bill, 2017 in September. The Bill aimed at providing land and housing units to the urban poor living in different slums.

The government had enacted the law as demographic shift from rural to urban areas has been a continuous process for past several decades, which resulted in shortage of affordable space. This led to the encroachment of large chunks of government land.