Odisha wins the UN-HABITAT’s World Habitat Awards 2023 for Jaga Mission

Bhubaneswar: Odisha has won the UN-HABITAT’s coveted World Habitat Awards 2023 for the former’s Jaga Mission – a 5T initiative of the State, which is the world’s largest land titling and slum upgrading programme that aims at empowering the lives of slum dwellers.

“Under the inspiring leadership of Chief Minister Naveen Patnaik, the Government of Odisha has set for itself the ambitious target of becoming the first slum-free state in India and is leading the Jaga Mission programme to upgrade all the 2,919 slums in the State,” a senior administrative official said.

Since the last five years of the initiative, about 1,75,000 families from different slums have been granted land tenure security. Under Jaga Mission, 100 per cent of households in 2,724 slums have been provided with piped water connections, 707 slums have been fully transformed into livable habitats, 100 per cent of households in 666 slums have individual toilets and eight cities have become slum-free.

Earlier in 2019, Odisha’s Jaga Mission had received the World Habitat Awards for its success in providing land tenure security to the slum dwellers in the State, the official source added.