Odisha Govt to sell 35,000 acres of land owned by Shri Jagannath Temple

• Whatever occurred after the Government take-over of the temples elsewhere is being repeated in the case of Shri Jagannatha Puri Temple. To avoid such incidents, it is necessary to liberate the temples from the control of the Government. Otherwise, the Government will dispose all the land and property of temples.

Bhubaneshwar (Odisha) – As per Law Minister Pratap Jena of the BJD-led Odisha Government, the State has initiated a process to sell 35,272 acres of land that belongs to Shri Jagannath Mandir in Odisha and six other States. While giving a reply to a question of Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Mohan Charan Majhi, Jena said that the State had formed a committee under the chairmanship of then-Governor BD Sharma. The Committee recommended the sale of temple land. The Government is taking the necessary steps to sell 35,272.235 acres of land properties of the temple.

Jena further added that the Shri Jagannath Temple of Puri owns 60,426.943 acres of land on 24 of the 30 Districts of Odisha. Out of this land, the temple administration could prepare the final Record of Rights (RoR) over 34,876.983 acres. The Minister said, “In accordance with the recommendation of the commission, steps are being taken to sell out the land as per state government’s approved Uniform Policy (Saman Niti).”

Pratap Jena, Law Minister of the Biju Janata Dal government in Odisha

Temple land in six states marked for sale

Odisha government to sell 35,000 acres of land owned by Lord Jagannath Temple, encroachers asked to payhttps://t.co/XZHaCP5rEj

— OpIndia.com (@OpIndia_com) March 17, 2021

The Law Minister further said that the Government has already sold out 315.337 acres of temple land that included the Bharati Matha building in Cuttack. Rs.11.20 crore was earned from selling the said land that has been deposited in the corpus fund of the temple. The Government has identified 395.252 acres of land in six states, including West Bengal (322.930 acres), Maharashtra (28.218 acres), Madhya Pradesh (25.110 acres), Andhra Pradesh (17.020 acres), Chhattisgarh (1.700 acres) and Bihar (0.274 acres).