(Recovered and Reloaded)
Reforms
in TS Land Administration
Vanam
Jwala Narasimha Rao
Metro
India (01-06-2016)
Assessing,
surveying, verifying, correcting and correlating of all assigned land in the
state and then putting it to proper use would be one of the priority flagship programs
of Telangana State Government. This as one of the main agenda, all the district
collectors would bring a new face to the land administration in the district
starting from village. Revolutionary reform initiatives in the area of land
administration introduced by Chief Minister K Chandrashekhar Rao during his
meeting with collectors and joint collectors on 23rd May 2016 at Dr MCR HRD Institute in Hyderabad would benefit lakhs
of poor people who mainly belong to Dalit community. It may be pointed out that 80%
of the land in Telangana lies with Small and Marginal Farmers who belong to
SC/ST/ BC communities.
Land Administration often referred as RevenueAdministration has been in
existence since ancient times with village as the basic unit. Land ownership continued as an
essential aspect of human societies
over the centuries. If New Economic Policy
enunciated by Russian Communist Leader Vladimir Lenin is an example through
which return of most agriculture land to private ownership took place in the
then Soviet Union, then, in any country in the world it would be the same.
Therefore Landand its ownership will be a
matter of utmost importance to the majority of rural population in the state,
especially to the poorer sections of the society.
Over a period,
thanks to the maladministration of the united Andhra Pradesh Government the
village administration has been wrecked. Similarly revenue administration also
suffered. What it was once a combination of excise, commercial taxes,
endowments etc, today it just remained as “Revenue” with umpteen shortcomings.
The state which was part of AP had a dose of urban ceiling and land reforms
whose implementation however has been inconsistent and to the disadvantage of
poor.
Land was
assigned and or distributed earlier too, but unscientifically not benefiting in
anyway. For instance, in many villages, either a bit of 100 acres was assigned
to 150 and odd beneficiaries or many bits to one beneficiary at several places.
This resulted in not utilizing the allotted land. Often the beneficiary found
it difficult to reach his land or to take his plough or bullock cart there.
Either he sold away it or done away with it not making use of it or might have
just left it.
Telangana
Government which is committed to the upliftment of Dalits and other
economically poor sections is implementing “Land Purchase Scheme” to buy and
assign three acres of agricultural land to the women of landless dalit family.
It was formally launched on 15th August, 2014. The philosophy of this is, that, poorest of the poor
SC women beneficiaries who are absolutely landless agricultural families shall
be given up to three acres of land in the first phase and other SC
beneficiaries having small pieces of land i.e. half acre, one acre and two
acres shall be provided with balance extent of land to make them land owners of
three acres each, in the subsequent phases. A total of 7685 acres have been
distributed so far to 2937 beneficiaries with a cost of Rs.317.25 crores as on
today. The philosophy includes the concept of consolidation of lands.
Several
problems are being faced by farmers like assigned lands, sadabainamas,
mutation, duplicate and multiple registrations etc that requires an integrated
approach to overcome these. Most farmers buy small extents of lands on
white paper. There are number of problems with Sadabainamas like Lack of access
to credit from financial institutions, tendency to borrow loans privately at
exorbitant rates, not having access to schemes from agriculture department and
Legal heirs of original Farmer entering into litigation with Sadabainamas owner
and create legal disputes and so on.
Common
man-a villager should be able to get his land related work like mutation
processed and completed in government without offering a bribe. A clear-cut
picture with regards to data pertaining to assigned land has to be
updated…village wise, mandal wise and district wise. Land is regarded as gold
mine and as such all records pertaining to land is to be clear and updated.
Registration of lands and changing of names is another fraud. In addition to
duplicate and multiple registration people indulge in registering lands though
they do not own them. One single piece of land is registered on more than one
person name. Even now we find people using pens and stamp papers of olden days
to create forged papers and get them registered. There is no data as to what
would be the total extent of government land under litigation and cases pending
in courts. Probably only when a fresh registration is mandated then the actual
extent may be available. There are many more such anomalies like availability
of excess or less land on ground than shown on paper. Land ownership is slowly
getting diluted. Land concentration is also diminishing.
Against
this background Chief Minister KCR had a lengthy review meeting with Collectors
and Joint Collectors of all the districts attended by among others some of his
cabinet colleagues, Chief Secretary and Chief Commissioner Land Administration.
The agenda for the meeting among others included revenue related subjects like
Sadabainamas (Sale Agreements on plain paper), status of land holdings,
mutation and pendency of land related cases and assignment lands. CM instructed
the officials concerned to regularize land sales done through the Sadabainamas
up to 5 (five) acres by giving extensive publicity. The cut of date for all
such transactions has been fixed as 2nd June 2014, the day Telangana State came in to existence. The
requests for registration will be accepted from 2nd June to 10th June 2016
and within fifteen days they would be registered free of cost.
Another
issue that was discussed at length in the meeting was mutation of regular
registrations and the hereditary transfers known as “Virasat”or “Pouthi”. CM
also refereed to corruption at bottom level in these cases and told collectors
to be very tough in such matters. The decision taken was that within 10 days of
receiving application under Pouthi concerned MRO should upload the details;
seek clarifications if any on the very next day of receiving application and on
11th day
mutation has to be completed and to be informed to the concerned with
certificate. Similarly in case of general registrations mutation has to be
completed within fifteen days after registration and has to be uploaded to
collector’s office. The collector would however have to continuously monitor.
The
meeting observed that out of an estimated 25 Lakh acres of assigned land that
was said to have been distributed to poor, mostly it is either not with the assignees
or might have been grabbed by landlords or realtors might have got into their
fold. About 75% of this land has been assigned in the past to SC/ST/BC
communities. Tahasildars have not been tracking the
possession of land by assignees. All this
has happened over a period since it was unscientifically assigned. It would
have been economical and viable had the assigned been given a minimum of three
acres. Even agriculture scientists suggest that three acres is the minimum.
Even if some were given more than an acre it was not in one place as one piece.
Hence consolidation is necessary to make
agriculture productive and intensive and viable. The Government decided to
encourage Consolidation of holdings in order to make Agriculture more
productive and profitable.
Thus the reform initiative in Telangana
land administration begins. End
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