A few days back, the Financial Commissioner of Revenue for the union territory ordered that the revenue record rooms in the entire union territory of Jammu and Kashmir be checked under the supervision of concerned Deputy Commissioners, and the report be submitted to this office along with recommendations. There are many points that should be checked, especially the availability of lockers, rags, and other related bags in which different types of records are kept safely. Secondly, it was also mentioned in the order that the binding should be checked, whether done or not, also if the record has been kept in a proper way and registers have been maintained or not.
Way back in the mid-fifties, there were only two record rooms operating in the erstwhile state, one in Jammu and another in Srinagar, popularly known as general record rooms. The entire record of both the divisions was kept there, be it Jamabandies or Girdawaries or mutation registers, and even after the first general settlement of both the divisions, massavies and aksi lattas were submitted there, including Record Of Rights. People were coming from far-off places to get their certified copies from these record rooms, and even many people were forced to stay in hotels or in many instances, they were staying in religious places as they found it feasible rather than coming back home because it costs them a lot.
Keeping in view the difficulties faced by the general public in getting revenue records from these record rooms, the then administration decided to establish record rooms at district levels, and by this, the rush in record rooms in Srinagar and Jammu got minimized to a lot, and now people were getting their papers easily in these record rooms.
After that, tehsil record rooms were established in every district of Jammu and Kashmir. Jamabandies, Girdawaries, and mutations were being kept in these record rooms, and one was finding it easy to visit the tehsil office and get his revenue paper from there. It was a good startup by the administration to start up record rooms at the tehsil level and even more when in 2014 new administrative units were established in the erstwhile state, and more tehsil record rooms came into place.
In district Anantnag, the district record room is situated in the office of the Deputy Commissioner, which is also the tehsil record room for Tehsil Anantnag and was located on the ground floor of the main building until September 2014. When the devastating floods affected the valley, it was shifted to the second storey of another building located in this old mini-secretariat complex. As per reports, 40 percent of records got damaged by that flood, resulting in many people facing hardships in finding their records, especially related to court cases.
But our dynamic, efficient officers in the higher hierarchy like the Financial Commissioner Revenue and Deputy Commissioner Anantnag have taken initiatives and asked for checking of these record rooms and sought suggestions from all Tehsildars in this regard, and it is expected that fireproof lockers will be made available in these record rooms so that the records will be preserved safely.
In this regard, Deputy Commissioner Anantnag Dr. Syed Fakhrudin Hamid Sahib ordered a team of three-member committee to be constituted who is visiting each tehsil these days. The team found that the records kept in tehsil record rooms lack proper management, as is visible because neither lockers are available nor binding has been done, especially to mutations deposited there. When this team visited Tehsil Bijbrara located on the Jammu-Srinagar old Highway, it found that the record had been kept on the ground floor and that too without binding and pages were open, and it is possible that at any instant it will be damaged. It is pertinent to mention here that the tehsil office is located on the ground floor, and the SDM office is located on the second floor of the building. When this author inquired and came to know that the building belongs to the municipality of Bijbehara, not the revenue department. While one wonders on the second storey of this building where the SDM office is located, one can see the election office is functioning on this storey. This author found it suitable if the election office will be shifted to another room and this room will be made a record room. As the area is flood-prone, thereby shifting this record room to the first floor of this building will make records safe, and it is necessary because we have learned a lesson from the floods in 2014.
But there is a different condition in Tehsil Shangus, and when the team reached there and found the records had been kept in trunks without binding. When inquired, it came to the fore that no infrastructure has been made available to this or any other tehsil in the entire district, and the same is the case of all tehsil record rooms in the union territory. If such a situation remains for a long time, then the day is not far when the records will get damaged, and that too with mismanagement.
Kudos and congratulations to FCR in general and Deputy Commissioner Anantnag in particular who have taken courageous steps and have sought suggestions to make these record rooms safe and people-friendly.

The writer is In-charge of the District Record Room, DC Office Anantnag. He can be reached at [email protected]

Mohd Amin Mir