With 60,654 acres, lord Jagannath could be the richest landlord among India’s deities. About 395 acres of it is now being sold to create a Rs1,000-crore maintenance corpus for the 12th-century shrine in Puri in the lord’s name, according to official sources.
Meanwhile, land sharks have grabbed vast patches of the 60,259 acres of the Jagannath Temple land across 23 districts in Odisha. The balance 395 acres is in Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra and West Bengal. Of these States, West Bengal has the maximum 322 acres.
Besides, according to Shree Jagannath Temple Administration (SJTA) sources, the Odisha Government has also written a letter to the district Collector of Nainital in Uttarakhand to pay the market value of a 52-year-old building owned by the temple. The owner of the two-storied building had donated the ground floor to the Jagannath Temple on April 26, 1964, and it has been rented out as a post office.
Ironically, the Odisha Government has no land records or ‘pattas’ for a whopping 27,331 acres spread across 111 tehsils in 23 districts if the State.
law Minister Arun Sahu had told the State Assembly recently that out of 60,259 acres of Jagannath’s land identified by the SJTA, the State has record of rights (RoR) of only 32,927 acres. The balance 27,331 acres has no record of rights,
He also informed that 340 cases have been filed against the land encroachers under the Sri Jagannath Temple Act 1955.
Committees have been formed under the concerned district Collectors to ascertain details of the temple land and expedite the process of acquiring revised records.
The Government has also planned to auction part of the temple land to boost its revenues. The Bhubaneswar Development Authority (BDA) has been asked to sell the land on plotting basis since it has expertise in land transactions.
However, the Government’s move has hit a roadblock as several villagers in the Jatni area in Khordha district have moved the Orissa High Court against this and got a stay order from the court. The Government is trying to get the stay order vacated so that about 125 acres can be sold, said an official.