B D Sharma
Revenue department serves as the backbone of the administrative set-up of the government. The department touches upon almost all aspects of a citizen’s life. It has the legacy and pride of being one of the oldest department. Its basic duty is to prepare and update the records of all lands, both the private and the government land. It has a well defined and well established setup consisting of Chowkidar, Numberdar, Patwari at the bottom to Divisional Commissioner, Financial Commissioner and Revenue Minister at the top, with many layers in-between. The Revenue set-up extends throughout the Union Territory, from villages to cities, reaching every corner, every family and every citizen. The functions of most of the other departments depend upon this department not only for requirement of land but also for implementing most of the developmental schemes, socioeconomic programs and social security related welfare schemes of the government. Its other pivotal roles relate to the maintenance of law and order, conduct of elections, conduct of census and disaster management.
The management of land affairs in our UT is a huge task as it involves preparation and updating record for millions of khasra numbers in big voluminous registers. Large number of employees are looking after this work and they have to perform a number of other duties also because of which they face a lot of challenges in the performance of their duties. The employees have to encounter a large number of people in the process of performing their duties. Some of the people are not likely to get prompt readdress of their grievances from them. Resultantly, the people have usually been depreciative of the working of the department right from the days of Todar Mal, the progenitor of the present Revenue system. The department strives to make efforts to improve its working and has been carrying out reforms from time to time. Many land reform laws were enacted before and after independence. Modern gadgets have been inducted. Thus Total Station Machines and Sextants were substituted for Jareeb and Cross for speedy measurement of the land when Madam Sushma Chaudhary was heading the department. Circle rates of all types of land of different areas are also being notified and revised regularly. In this way under valuation of lands has been eliminated and evasion of the stamp duty has been curbed to a large extent. New law for acquisition of land, Right to Fair Compensation…. Resettlement Act has been enacted in order to pay adequate compensation to the land owners. Large scale scanning and digitization of the land records has been taken in hand so that the same is accessed by the people hassle free in transparent and quick mode. In this way the interface of the employees and public is aimed to be minimized in order to eliminate chances of much maligned double-dealing. Online service has been provided for getting the copies of the revenue records without running after the Patwari. Similarly people can get the necessary certificate issued by applying for it online. It has rightly been visualized that computerization and introduction of modern gadgets would simplify and streamline the working of the Department.
However, some people particularly from the lower strata of society are not very happy with the adoption of new system. Obviously some deficiencies exist in this procedure because of which they have not welcomed it. Many people are experiencing a lot of difficulty in getting smoothly the requisite copies of revenue record, in the issuance of certificate, in the attestation of mutations. For accomplishment of these tasks the people have to adopt this pathway only because the old procedure of personally approaching the officials for getting their jobs done has been done away with by the authorities.
While making the online procedure mandatory the authorities have thrown to the winds the two cardinal principles of effecting a smooth changeover to a new system. One, that the transformation should not be abrupt and sudden and should be carried out gradually. And secondly it must be evaluated as to how is it going to affect the last man in the row i.e. the most poor and vulnerable segment of the society. The authorities were well intentioned for introducing the new system. The computers and its allies have brought revolution in all fields of human activities. Even the children are seen fiddling with electronic devices not only in cities/towns but also in the remote areas. So the situation was thought to be ripe for changeover to modern gadgets. But authorities lost sight of the fact that much of the people’s indulgence with the gadgets was confined to playing video games and interacting in WhatsApp and Facebook groups. Majority of the people are not familiar as to how to utilize these devices for getting copies of land records or for getting a certificate issued. Only a handful of resourceful persons have easy access and the acumen to use the online facilities and the introduction of this facility has proved a boon to them. A large section of villagers have no understanding as to how to avail of the new facility and they have to depend upon a computer vendor/Service center for getting his work done. Thus the people have been unwittingly thrown before a new breed of ‘patwaris’. Some of them may also be as demanding as the Patwaris used to be. After all almost every body is bathing naked in the “Hamaam” of Indian society.
In order to appreciate the positives and shortcomings of the new system its comparison with the conventional system becomes necessary. The conventional system had become unpopular because people had to run around the Revenue employees for getting their jobs done. Some changes have rightly been thought of and are in the process of being implemented . The transformation doesn’t seem to be taking place smoothly because the new system is also somewhat cumbersome in some respects. For example, in order to get copies of one’s record one has to apply online and has to put in the system the particulars of one’s land such as khasra/Khata/Khewat number. Many farmers do not know the particulars of their land – the passbooks of many farmers having been torn /misplaced. They have but to knock at the door of the Patwari for this information and thus whole effort of eliminating the interface gets defeated.
The other way for getting the details of one’s land is to download the same from the current Jamabandis (Quadrennial Record of rights) which have been digitized. One has to look out for one’s name and the copy of the record can be downloaded easily and that too in the language of one’s choice. But this approach is also not helpful to many people because the digitized Jamabandis, do suffer from many deficiencies. Majority of the Jamabandis have not been prepared strictly in accordance with the guidelines laid down in the Standing Order. They have not been prepared and read out to the village assembly with regards to all details of land to the farmers in the open gathering. Neither have the Girdawar conducted the verification of hundred percent entries, nor the Naib Tehsildar and Tehsildar have done their share of verification, all in the presence of a village assembly. The record of rights prepared in this way is left with mistakes. So the entries in the Jamabandis prepared in the slip shod manner do not reflect the factual position. Some people apprehend that some of the Jamabandis have been got prepared by the regular Patwaris by hiring the services of retired Patwaris. So getting the entries ascertained in the village assembly has obviously been a casualty. Secondly the complete Jamabandis in the digitized form are not available for all the villages. Thirdly in some of the Mahal villages the so-called current Jamabandis were prepared more than seventy years(for example Bagla village in Samba, Bhalwal in Jammu district) and the digitization of Jamabandis in such villages is an uphill task because lot of changes in rights over land have taken place and many notes/endorsements have been made in every Khewat.
The other important service required by the farmers is to get the mutation of their land, mainly inheritance mutation, attested in his and other successors’ favour. As per the procedure the applicant has to transmit the death certificate, copies of ration card or voter list, legal heirs certificate etc. while applying online. Getting these documents in itself is cumbersome and time consuming process. After these certificates are obtained then the farmer has to proceed to the computer centre, pay the prescribed fees to the Government and service charges to the computer centre and apply online for attestation of mutation. On receipt of the online application it is scrutinized by the Revenue officer and the patwari. In the field it has been seen that one or the other deficiency in most of the cases is found and a query is raised. Since the clarification/query is raised online so the poor farmer remains oblivious of this for days. Neither the staff nor the vendor is obligated to inform the applicant about it. The vendors do not normally monitor the progress of the online application submitted through them. Our cultural traditions also add to the complications. For instance the people of older generation used to have two names and many times different versions got recorded in the two documents, say an individual’s name is recorded as Ambo in old revenue record and Amarnath in death certificate. Online application in such case is rejected by the system though the ground is flimsy. It takes a lot of time for the poor farmer to get the objections removed and to get a simple inheritance mutation attested.
Though some high-handedness used to be witnessed from the staff in the traditional method also yet normally it used to have a smooth sailing. The farmer would simply report the death of his father to the Patwari who made entries in the mutation register sheet, the Girdawar conducted the verification and put up the same before the Revenue officer during the tour to the village/Patwar halqa. The Revenue officer would conduct inquiry in the case in his camp in the village assembly and attest the inheritance mutation there and then. This was very simple procedure as the mutation was attested on the basis of verbal statements of the applicant and the persons present there. The requisite facts like death of the land holder, the identity of successors and anomaly in name were instantly clarified in the open camp. There was no requirement of producing death certificate, legal heirs certificate and the like as the statements made in the open village assembly by the applicant and endorsed by the assembly had irrefutable authenticity. Even the complicated issues of dispute were resolved as no person had the audacity to tell a lie in the presence of village community and need of producing documentary evidence was rarely felt. Some times even a mutation had not been entered by the Patwari. An applicant had just to appear before the officer in the camp with the request for attesting a mutation and the same would be got entered there and then and attested by the officer. One would even come across instances where when a mutation was found entered in the register, the officer would verify the facts from the people present in the camp and attest the mutation even without the presence and knowledge of the beneficiary. At the top of it, the mutation fee of rupee one used to be deposited by the officer himself out of his own pocket in such cases. It may be of some interest to the readers that late Chaudhary Bharat Bhushan, a luminary of Revenue Department told us, the trainee Tehsildars, that he as Tehsildar Ramban had attested 134 mutations in one camp only, some of the mutations having been got entered by Patwaris on spot itself. And here in the age of Computers, it takes a poor farmer months together to get first the death certificate, copies of ration card/ voter list, legal heirs certificate online and then going to the vendor to apply online for getting the inheritance mutation attested.
Another problem which pertains to issuance of copies of revenue record from the scanned record. It is a magnificent achievement of the department that almost the whole of revenue record has been scanned. The old revenue record was getting damaged and by scanning it, the department has saved it for posterity. Some parts of the original record were, however, faint and dilapidated so the printouts got from them are also very faint and are hardly legible. Even if a legible copy is got the same is written in “Munshiana” Urdu which is difficult to be decoded and read particularly by the people of Jammu region. Manually prepared copies is the solution for it. So such copies should also be allowed to be issued to the public to deal with this problem.
In the light of foregoing reasons the authorities should allow the old system to continue along with enforcement of the online procedure. There is still either the computer illiteracy amongst majority of our people, or unavailability of the computer facilities in the remote areas or the mindset of the people and the employees has not changed. The online procedure mode has to take over these tasks ultimately. There is no doubt that time has come for the idea of applying modern gadgets in running the land administration and nobody can stop it. It must be applied in all cases but transformation must take place gradually. Revenue Department is tradition bound department and majority of the people for whom it is largely working are living in a world of simplicity and ignorance. It takes time to bring reforms in such a society.
There are other issues confronting the department such as the tardy progress of Settlement operations despite introduction of modern gadgets, the logical culmination of the issues arising out of the striking down of the Roshni Act by the High Court and the rethinking over it in the government over some aspects of the issue, simplifying the complex share holding entries and evolving a method of expunging the names of co-sharers who have got dissociated since long from a particular parcel of land, allowing and facilitating registration of relinquishment of rights by co-sharers without stamp duty to obviate family feuds over land, allowing conversion of land use(CLU) up to 5 marlas for commercial purposes in the villages to facilitate setting up of shops/small units by unemployed youth(to fulfill PM Modi’s dream), examination of implications of allowing the transfer/construction on the Ghair Mumkin Khad/Darya land vis-à-vis ground water recharge and the right of user by village communities over such land etc. Lack of space might have constrained their elaboration. But they are certainly waiting eagerly and calling for the attention of the authorities.