The records of over 60,000 acres of land in the name of Lord Jagannath will soon be digitized, an official said on Tuesday.
There is 60,426 acre of land in Odisha and 395.252 acres 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 acres, while 28.21 acres of land is in Maharastra, 25.11 acres in Madhya Pradesh, 17.02 acres in Andhra Pradesh, 1.7 acres 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 digitization of the land records.
The process will be initiated after receiving the state government's approval, he said.
The managing committee also discussed 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 the 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.
He said 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 on 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 said.
(Inputs from PTI)
