By Bizodisha Bureau, Bhubaneswar, December 10, 2019: Odisha has won the bronze at this year’s World Habitat Awards of its innovative initiative granting land rights to thousands of slum dwellers under the Odisha Liveable Habitat Mission (OLHM) or Jaga Mission.
The annual award is given by World Habitat, a UK-based organisation, in partnership with UN-Habitat, in recognition of innovative, outstanding and revolutionary ideas, projects, and programmes from across the world.

Launched in May 2018, OLHM is being implemented in collaboration with reputed philanthropic organisations like Tata Trusts and Norman Foster Foundation for providing land to slum dwellers and transforming all slums in the state to liveable habitats. About 52,682 families have been granted land rights certificates while 1,725 slums were surveyed using drones and GIS technology.

The state also adopted state-of-the-art technology combined with extensive community participation resulting in dispute and litigation-free implementation of the programme.

Soon after the state bagged the award chief minister Naveen Patnaik tweeted, “Odisha won the World Habitat Award 2019 for @TheJagaMission. Congratulations to Team @HUDDeptOdisha and its partners @tatatrusts and @NormanFosterFdn. The journey to empower 1.7 million urban poor living in slums continues.”

Congratulating the chief minister for the award, Tata Trusts chairman Ratan Tata said, “I extend my congratulations to the chief minister of Odisha and his team at this proud moment. The World Habitat Award is a recognition of the vision and commitment of the government of Odisha to improve the lives of the urban poor. The Tata Trusts are privileged to partner with the government of Odisha in this noble initiative.”