Dalit land land issue: In time possession of land allotted for dalits demanded

BHUBANESWAR: The Orissa Dalit Adhikar Manch (ODAM), a forum of dalit organisations working on the issues relating to dalit community, on Thursday at a State-level convention on ‘Dalit Land Issues in Odisha’ demanded the Government to give in time possession of the land allotted for the Scheduled Caste people in the State. Later they handed over a memorandum to Revenue and Disaster Management Minister Suryanarayan Patro on land issues of dalit communities in the State.

Attending the convention, the Revenue Minister said the State Government has distributed land rights to 2, 68,000 landless people in the State. Recently, the Government has introduced a programme by which the land demarcation and distribution process would become easier than before, said Patra, adding, “An intermediary would work as a bridge between the Government and poor people while allotting the Government land in the name of the proper beneficiaries.”

He also said the intermediaries along with the local Revenue Inspectors would find out the Government lands in the particular area for the distribution among the landless poor. The intermediary would get Rs 4,000 per month, he said, adding, “We have started the work in 117 scheduled areas in the State.”          

During the discussion, ODAM coordinator Prashant Mallick said that majority of dalit families have no homestead Patta land to securely construct houses as a large majority of them were put up on the so called Government land or community land for generations which has not been recorded in their name as because there has been no survey and settlement initiative carried out by the revenue department.

He also demanded the ‘Vasundhara’ programme should be time bound and the beneficiaries should be given patta and possession at the same time, because many of the families have patta for last few years and still they have not received the possession. He also alleged that dalits access to natural resources like forest and water bodies were increasingly being restricted by dominant caste and communities in the respective areas.