Puri: The records of over 60,000 acre of land in the name of Lord Jagannath will soon be digitised, an official said Tuesday. There is 60,426 acre of land in Odisha and 395.252 acre of land in six other states in the name of Mahaprabhu Jagannath Bije, Chief Administrator of Shree Jagannath Temple Administration (SJTA) VV Yadav said after a meeting of its managing committee, chaired by Gajapati Maharaja Dibya Singha Deb of Puri.
Outside Odisha, the largest land parcel is in West Bengal – 322.930 acre, while 28.21 acre of land is in Maharastra, 25.11 acre in Madhya Pradesh, 17.02 acre in Andhra Pradesh, 1.7 acre in Chhattisgarh and 0.27 acre in Bihar, official sources said.
Yadav said the state-run Odisha Space Application Center (ORSAC) will be given the task for the digitisation of the land records. The process will be initiated after receiving the Odisha government’s approval, he said.
The managing committee also discussed about the formation of the Shri Mandir Adarsh Gurukul Society for the education of the children of the servitors, and the housing project for the servitors.
The application for the registration of the society, which will be run by Birla Foundation, has been filed with the Inspector General of Registration (IGR). The IGR asked for certain compliances and those have been met, Yadav said.
Yadav also informed that the Birla Foundation will be invited to the next managing committee meeting for discussions on the master plan. The tender for the first phase of construction of the boundary wall of the housing project for servitors at Harachandi Sahi will be opened October 6, he said.
The meeting also approved the recommendations of the Niti Sub-Committee of the temple. The rituals proposed by the sub-committee for the month of Kartik have got the nod of the managing committee, he said.
However, the managing committee did not take up the demand of opening the temple’s Ratna Bhandar. “That was not in today’s agenda,” Yadav informed.