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The Odisha government is working on a new Land Management Act that will replace several old revenue laws and make land record management easier for citizens. The proposed law will allow people to handle mutation and related services through local tehsildars, who will also receive more authority through amendments to the Survey and Settlement Act. A detailed report on Puri's complex land ownership structure has been sought to guide further reforms. The move is aligned with the state's broader push to simplify land classifications and improve transparency.
The Odisha government is framing a new Land Management Act aimed at making land-related processes simpler and more structured across the state. Revenue Minister Suresh Pujari shared during a review meeting in Puri that this legislation will replace multiple outdated revenue laws that have created procedural delays for several years. The objective is to bring various land rules under one standard framework so that record handling becomes more consistent for both citizens and officials. Advertisement
The proposed Act focuses on improving public access to land records by allowing routine tasks such as mutation and corrections to be handled directly at the tehsil level. This change is expected to reduce the number of steps usually required for such updates. To support this shift, the government is also preparing amendments to the Survey and Settlement Act so that tehsildars can issue decisions more independently without requiring unnecessary escalation to higher authorities.
During the meeting, Puri was cited as a key example of why these reforms are necessary. Land in the district has overlapping control among several bodies, including the Urban Development Authority, RERA, and the Endowment Department. These overlaps have led to delays in ownership clarification and frequent disputes. The Puri collector has been asked to submit a detailed report identifying these issues, and the findings will help the state refine provisions in the upcoming Act.
The government is also pursuing a broader exercise to simplify land classifications and ownership categories. Officials have proposed reducing more than 7,000 land classes to 27 and trimming nearly 3,000 ownership types to a much smaller number. This work is part of an ongoing process to update land governance systems that have remained unchanged since older administrative periods.
Another recent change supports this broader reform effort. The state has authorised tehsildars to update land records for property buyers whose titles were not recorded during earlier settlement operations. Earlier, such cases required appeals to senior officials, which often resulted in delays. With this amendment, tehsildars can directly address these pending cases and provide quicker resolutions.
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