Settlements Of Land Records Without Men & Machinery Is Futile

Settlement of land records establishing boundaries of a piece of land recording the ownerships, giving new survey numbers and entering mutations, kinds of soil and many more things. Important part of the settlement operation is establishing ownerships and checking the possession of land and measuring dimensions and boundaries. Maximum disputes regarding land ownerships First Settlement of Jammu and Kashmir was conducted in 1891 by a British Revenue Officer Lawrence. In Kashmiri language it he is known as “Laran Sahib”. Today also all the aged persons call him by this name. he was invites by Maharaja here for doing historical settlement and really correct record was prepared. Spot and record matched properly as per this settlement. From that very time 125 years have gone and no government took the initiative to look forward for doing the new settlement. As we know any previous governments were having a habit of taking up projects and then abandoning the same for the reason best known for them.
Few years back the then state government started the settlement in the entire state. Few estates were completed and the operation got closed. The closing of the operation half way and loss to the state is yet to be unidentified and is the big question which nobody has dared yet to answer from the stakeholders. Till this day no headway has been made in this regard. 125 new Administrative unites were established in the year 2014. While making these new administrative units ir was decided that a Panchayat Halqa comprising of one or the two villages will have one patwari there by 3500 new posts of Patwari will be crated accordingly but till date no such order has been implemented by the revenue department. As the demands of the work force in revenue department are not being fulfilled by the working has gone haywire. During these 125 years when the first settlement was done, many changes have taken place resulting there is an impact in land. During these years, many great changes regarding land took place. Many new laws have were implemented resulting there was a extensive impact on land. For instance at the settlement time in an estate a survey number has been measured sixteen kanals. In these years the said survey number has been sold to thirty two land holders resulting in such survey number got divided and in the revenue records this survey number is represented in the quotient form or sometimes min number and there are many constructions on this survey number. One land holder who has the title of few marlas in this survey number moves an application for demarcating the land citing reasons that he has less land as compared to the sale deed. A Patwari is asked to demarcate the land. As per rule he has to find the boundaries of the said survey number and possibly some part of boundaries of this survey number has come under construction of another person’s land implies he cannot demarcate the land properly and the boundaries cannot be traced out. On many litigations relating to land disputes honorable courts did not settle the disputes citing reason demarcation of the disputed property is not possible to demarcate due to conjunction or something else. Sale of land is taking place on a large scale due to population explosion and residential land assumed out of proportion importance, resulting the work on the revenue department increased.
In new of the ever burgeoning work of the revenue department The Government few years back took an initiative and started settlement work of land and the common man found that by doing so most of the land disputes could be ended and it would reduce to pendency of lawsuits in the court of law. But after completing settlement of few villages and the whole operation came to standstill and no headway was made was made in this regard. It was a setback. Mow as the digitalization programme is near completion the government should initiate the programme of settlement smoothly across the length and breadth of the Union Territory. This author salutes his Excellency honorable L.G Sinha Sahab who takes keen interest towards the digitalization programme settlement of land provide a more concreate and comprehensive nature to the land rights. It includes:
i. Survey and Demarcation of land
ii. Assessment of land revenue
iii. Preparation of record of rights
The settlement officers conduct a survey, prepare a report and submit it to the Government.
Survey and Demarcation: The settlement team takes the survey of each land plot and the villages are measured and demarcated by suitable boundary masks. For each village, a large number Cadastral Map based on the traverse survey and showing roads, rivers, railways and other. Physical features and homesteads and other fields are prepared. During the survey operation and measurement of plots, disputes regarding the boundaries of plots may arise. In such cases the survey officer here known as Patwari will notify the statement officer who will decide all disputes. During the settlement operations, Record Of Rights for each estate is prepared. The Record Of Rights is the “Jamabandi” based on “Chitha” (i.e. field index) and the field map. After the village is surveyed and demarcated a draft (chitha) or field index is prepared. This “chitha” is arranged according to the serial number of the fields. The process of Digitalization is now aimed to cover all sorts of land alienations as well as devolution of rights of inheritance to achieve continuity in Land Records updation and easy access by the stakeholders. After completing digitalization of newly prepared Jamabandies revenue department has started issuing passbooks to the landholders. It is a right step towards transparency but can one expect this Land Passbook is equivalent to Bank Pass Book. In my opinion it will be as capable as a bank Pass Book only when settlement of land is done. Due to Population growth and hectic schedule of assignments of revenue officials especially patwari’s the government should recruit a large number of Technical Revenue Staff on the presumption that they have to expertise of handling revenue cases and the settlement work. Instead of recruiting new staff before starting of the settlement it will not be a correct administrative measure and is likely to create many difficulties. The foremost disadvantage is that the task of land settlement has passed into a state of limbo in previous “half done” exercise and without men and machinery as the demand of work force in the department, starting this essential work will be a lengthy process and leading to problems for the common masses.
(The author is incharge District Record Room at DC Office Anantnag. The views, opinions, facts, assumptions, presumptions and conclusions expressed in this article are author’s own and aren’t necessarily in accord with the views of “Kashmir Horizon.)
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