Revenue courts were established to solve the disputes among the land owners as per their ownership rights, especially the inheritance rights or land disputes related to Agrarian Reforms Act. In an inheritance right, if any legal heir, son or daughter, has not been entered as a legal heir for whatever reason, has the fundamental right to appeal against such mutation. For this purpose, the Collector Agrarian Reforms Commissioner commonly known as Additional Deputy Commissioner is the authority to accept the appeal and provide justice to the deserving legal heir.
However, the main question that needs answer is who is the attesting authority? It is Tehsidar or Naib Tehsildar. When a patwari enters the inheritance mutation of any landholder in the mutation register he or she is duty-bound to find the legal heirs of the deceased and mention them in the mutation register and the attesting officer has to verify the so-called persons mentioned in the Pedegary table so that no legal heir shall be dropped out. But this writer has observed that in maximum cases, the patwari has mentioned all the legal heirs but the attesting officer has not mentioned all the legal heirs. This means the share has been given only to those who have been mentioned and others who have not. This situation has been repeated in each corner of the union territory.
When the dropped legal heirs come to know that they have been dropped from the inheritance mutation they have only one chance to appeal the mutation before the competent authority for justice. But, many do not get justice in their entire life. The maximum of such cases are only money-making banks for lawyers and their agents. Most of the people have lost faith in revenue courts and they comment that the officers related are not making efforts in delivering justice.
The same is the situation with cases related to Agrarian hit land. The basic funda for agrarian land is that a person is mentioned as a protected tenant in 1967-68 jamabandi and then after he and those persons who were on-spot tenants of the land were recorded as tenants in Kharief 1971. Then after they were recorded as expected Malikan by a mutation known as Section 4. After that Sections 6 or 8 or 12 were made as Malikikamil. There are many cases where the attesting officer has not taken the basic funda into consideration and has attested Sections 4 and 8 thereby litigation arose. It is the attesting authority who laid down the foundation stone for litigation. This is the main reason people have lost faith. It is a fact that the attesting authority must have an eagle’s eye while attesting mutation. Pros and cons must be checked before attesting the mutation.
The writer is In-charge Record Room Anantnag and can be reached at mo**********@***il.com
Why revenue courts have lost credibility?
