Their land was swallowed by the advancing Bay of Bengal a long time ago, but the residents of Satabhaya, situated by the edge of the sea in Odisha’s Kendrapara district, continue to pay cess for this land that no longer exists.
Those who do not pay land rent have been served notices by Odisha’s revenue administration; a certificate case had been registered against them under the Odisha Public Demands Recovery Act.
Coastal erosion has eaten away vast portions of Satabhaya Gram Panchayat.Approximately 4,300 acres of land have been submerged under seawater over the last four decades, while the remaining 2,500 acres of land, both government and private, has turned barren either due to ingress of saline water or sand casting. There is hardly any cultivable land left in the panchayat comprising of villages such as Satabhaya, Kanhupur, Rabindrapali and Gobindpur.
On the sea floor “My ancestral land must now be lying somewhere on the sea floor. In our village, saline water has robbed the agricultural value of land while sand dunes have wiped land boundaries from the map. But people continue to pay rent for non-existent land, hoping that the government would someday compensate loss of livelihood by giving land equal to what they now possess in revenue records,” said Sudarshan Rout, a resident of Satabhaya.
Mr. Rout said paying rent for non-existent land was necessary as the government insists on updated land records before issuing income or caste certificates.
