BHUBANESWAR: After just a month of enacting the 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 drones. The government has put to use drone technology for the first time to identify and delineate land in the slums in Konark on a pilot basis.
In the second phase, drones will be mobilised for the identification of slums in six urban local bodies (ULBs) of Ganjam district, which will kick start from Friday.
Drones provide an aerial video of the exact size of slums and the area covered by dwellers. The government will start distributing patta to beneficiaries in all urban areas from January 1, 2018 and has targetted to deliver over 1 lakh patta.
In September, the Odisha Assembly passed the Land Rights to slum dwellers bill. The Bill was aimed at providing land and housing units to the urban poor living in different slums. The government enacted the law as a demographic shift from rural to urban areas has been continuous process for past several decades, which resulted in shortage of affordable space. This led to the encroachment of large chunks of government land.
