Inadequate training and systemic flaws in revenue records leave citizens struggling to access accurate land information
Many changes have been made in the Revenue Department by the administration, and the most visible change that is people-friendly is the online revenue record. People have appreciated this step taken by the administration. Today, every document is made online, be it an income certificate or fard. People don’t have to visit offices or find officials and officers.
Recently written and digitalized jamabandies in each village of the Union Territory were made available on an online portal like other revenue documents, but when any person wanted to check his land records from this online portal, they were not in a position to find it properly. The reason for this is either the operator in the Common Service Centre is not capable or the wrong entry has been made. Most of the operators in CSCs are not properly trained. So, the people are asked to visit record rooms for older records, and when enquired, people say their record is either wrongly written or not available on the portal and wonder what they should do.
Now, orders have been put in place to rectify these jamabandies and make them error-free within a stipulated time. Some people are not finding their mutations in these jamabandies as they are yet to be incorporated into revenue records. It is a fact that newly attested mutations will be incorporated into this current record, but there are mutations that have been attested decades before and are yet to be incorporated into jamabandies. Now, people are frequently asked to bring certified copies of these mutations from the record rooms so that they can be incorporated into revenue records.
Patwaries have started the rectification process, and it will be completed in a week’s time, but the big question arises: why not give at least one month for each village for rectification and directions to be put in place to verify this digitalized record with old records? There is another question: many of these jamabandies were not earlier verified by the concerned authorities properly, as their claim is that proper time was not given for verification. Authorities must monitor the process themselves so that the record is made error-free, and merely taking an undertaking from field officials is not enough.
There are many examples of wrong entries in the tenancy column of jamabandies, as these entries do not match with old records. The Revenue Department has made it mandatory that the land must be recorded not only in the ownership column but also that the tenancy column must match with the Milikiyat column. But this was not followed previously because patwaries were barred from changing the entries in the cultivation columns, resulting in entries from the eighties still being reflected in the current records. No doubt, Girdawar Quanoongos are all powerful enough to make the changes, but they have not paid any interest toward it. Had they become aware of their profession and taken a keen interest, these entries may have been rectified.
Actually, it had become routine: person A existed in the ownership column but not in the tenancy column while being the possession holder for that survey number. The person was allowed to alienate or mortgage the land, but it was mentioned in the footnote of the revenue extracts, especially the Jamabandi extract, that person A is the landowner and possesses the land in the survey number where his or her name was not recorded in the tenancy column.
Now, digitalized jamabandies have been frozen, and no one can change the entries until the rectification file is completed. Despite the completion of rectification files, none of the entries have been reflected in these jamabandies, and common people suffer a lot. The need of the day is to frame a program that should be people-friendly so that it should be made an easy way by which these tenancy entries can be reflected or changes can be made easily in the tenancy column. Secondly, mutations attested after the digitalized jamabandies were written, or any previous mutation not reflected in the records, should be allowed to be incorporated in the digitalized jamabandies at the earliest.
The writer is a Patwari at the Ttehsil Office Qazigund
Mohd Amin Mir
mi********@***il.com