Land rights to empower 1900 single women in Mayurbhanj

BALASORE: The Mayurbhanj district administration has handed over land pattas - documents of legal rights - to 1,938 single landless women. The women received legal rights to homestead land at a ceremony on Saturday.
The programme has been made operational through cells from each tehsil office of the district. "Anganwadi workers have been engaged to reach out to each and every poor single woman in the rural areas.After thorough field verification, land titles have been issued to single women," said collector (Mayurbhanj) Rajesh Pravakar Patil.
While the primary focus of the programme is to provide small plots of land to these women, including widows, divorcees, separated, differently abled and unmarried women, the programme also aims at helping these women live a life of dignity with some security.
A series of livelihood counselling camps have also been organized at the panchayat-level in Baripada sub-division to help these women get their social security entitlements such as pension, food security schemes and National Family Benefit Scheme (NFBS) from the block offices.
NGO Landesa's state director Sibabrata Choudhury said, "Mayurbhanj is the first district to start GP-level livelihood counselling for thousands of poor single women, identified through the women support centre programmes."