Odisha is set to amend its long-standing land law, aiming to streamline the process for converting agricultural land to non-agricultural use in urban areas. The proposed change would eliminate the need for separate clearance from the revenue department, designating municipal and development authorities as the sole approval bodies. This move is part of the state’s efforts to facilitate urban development and enhance land use efficiency.
“This overlapping jurisdiction causes avoidable delays, high costs, and administrative backlogs for citizens and businesses. Rather than running parallel processes, municipal and urban authorities will now assess and collect land conversion fees directly during the plan approval stage, remitting them to the state treasury. Upon receipt of the fees, the local municipal authorities will electronically notify the Revenue Department. The local revenue officer will then update the official Record-of-Rights (RoR) to non-agricultural status within a prescribed timeframe, without requiring a separate application from the landowner.
Under the current legal framework, landowners in urban areas have to secure building plan and layout approvals from municipal authorities while separately applying to the state’s Revenue Department to convert the classification of agricultural land under Section 8-A of the Odisha Land Reforms Act, 1960.
The new Bill addresses this bottleneck by stipulating that the requirement to obtain explicit conversion permission from a revenue officer will cease to apply to lands situated within municipal corporations, municipalities, notified area councils, or regional development authorities,” a senior official from the state Revenue and Disaster Management Department said.
