The Revenue Department here has recently begun taking action against defaulters by issuing notices to collect cess against land already devoured by sea in the sea erosion prone Satabhaya area.
The department is registering certificate cases under Orissa Public Demand Recovery (OPDR) Act against the defaulters.
According to locals, though several acres of land had been devoured by the sea and sand cast occurred in agriculture land by making the land barren, but the local Gupti Revenue circle under Rajnagar tehsil has yet to revise land settlement and the Revenue Department has asked the landowners to pay cess.
According to official sources, in last four decades about 4,300 acres of land have already been submerged by sea water while rest nearly 2,500 acres of land, including 2,150 acres of Government land, in Satabhaya gram panchayat have turned barren due to either ingress of saline water or sand cast. There is hardly any cultivable land left in the panchayat comprising villages such as Satabhaya, Kanhupur, Rabindrapali and Gobindpur.
The settlement of land in Satabhaya gram panchayat had last been conducted in 1988-1989. Since then, no fresh survey has been conducted to measure the existing land in the sea erosion-hit villages.
“Revenue law binds the department to collect cess. The local administration is not empowered to waive land cess even though the administration is aware of the fact that the sea has dispossessed people of their ancestral land. So for remission, it needs approval from the State Government,” stated Rajnagar Tehsildar Khirod Behera.
According to Revenue Inspector of Gupti Rashmi Ranjan Mallick, the crawling of sea has consistently been eating up the agriculture and homestead land. It is quite unrealistic to ask the local people to pay cess. But when some inhabitants have been paying cess, arrears are building up on those who fail to do so. The Revenue Department has served notices to the ‘defaulting’ landowners.
“My ancestral land is now somewhere in the sea floor. In our village, saline water has robbed land of agricultural while sand dunes have wiped land’s boundary from the map. But people continue to pay rents for non-existent land with a hope that the Government would someday compensate their loss,” stated Nalini Ranjan Biswal, a resident of Satabhaya.
According to Sudarshan Rout, co-coordinator of Satabhaya Rehabilitation colony, fellow villagers are paying rent for non-existent land as it has become necessary for many villagers to get updated land records before issuing resident, income or caste certificates.
When contacted district Collector Debaraj Senapati stated the district administration is going to send a proposal to the RDC (central) and Member, Board of Revenue, for cess remission. The Rajnagar Tehsildar has been directed to compile a comprehensive report to expedite the cess remission.