THEBUSINESSBYTES
BUREAU
BHUBANESWAR, AUGUST 1, 2026
The Odisha Cabinet on Saturday approved a
proposal to amend the Odisha Development Authority (ODA) Act, 1982, to
facilitate the creation of Economic Region Development Authorities (ERDAs), a
move aimed at enabling integrated planning and governance of large urban and
industrial corridors across the state.
The Cabinet cleared the proposed Odisha
Development Authorities (Amendment) Bill, 2026, which seeks to create a
statutory framework for constituting and administering ERDAs in line with the
state's Vision 2036 and Vision 2047 roadmap that identifies urbanisation as a
key driver of economic growth.
The amendment proposes to introduce the definitions
of "Economic Region" and "Economic Region Development
Authority" into the ODA Act and insert a new Chapter IIA, empowering the
state government to notify and establish ERDAs without enacting a separate law
for each economic region.
Officials said the new institutional framework
would facilitate integrated planning beyond municipal boundaries through
region-specific economic and master plans, besides ensuring seamless
coordination among multiple development authorities operating within a single
economic region.
They said the framework is expected to attract
investments, generate employment, improve housing, strengthen urban mobility,
enhance public services and ensure coordinated infrastructure development
across interconnected urban centres.
As part of its long-term urban development
strategy, the state has identified several economic agglomerations for phased
development, including the Bhubaneswar-Cuttack-Puri-Paradeep Economic Region
(BKPPER), Bargarh-Jharsuguda-Sambalpur, Berhampur-Chhatrapur-Gopalpur and
Jeypore-Koraput-Sunabeda.
The Bhubaneswar-Cuttack-Puri-Paradeep Economic
Region has been selected as the pilot project, with its economic development
plan prepared in collaboration with NITI Aayog. The region brings together
ports, industrial clusters, urban centres, logistics infrastructure and major
religious and cultural destinations into a unified economic corridor.
The proposal comes in the wake of the Union
Budget 2026-27 identifying four City Economic Regions as engines of economic
growth. The Bhubaneswar-Cuttack-Puri-Paradeep Economic Region is among the four
selected, alongside Varanasi in Uttar Pradesh, Surat in Gujarat and
Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh.
Once the Odisha Legislative Assembly passes the
amendment Bill, the Bhubaneswar-Cuttack-Puri-Paradeep Economic Region is
expected to become the state's first Economic Region Development Authority
under the new legal framework, marking a significant step towards integrated
urban and industrial planning in Odisha.
