Rev Deptt has shortage of manpower especially Patwaries

Revenue Department is the core department of civil administration ranging from chowkidar to divisional commissioner at the divisional level and among them patwari once the registration of a village an essential member of this family. A patwari maintains the land records of a village and also prepares fresh records like Jamabandies and girdawaries. Few decades ago a patwari was having two or three villages under his charge. And population was less naturally there were less house holds in these villages. At the time of historic settlement done by Sir Lawrence one century ago Record of Rights register was written for each village by the Patwaries. At that time few people were aware about the measurement of land and Lawrence thought how to tackle the situation and he hired many persons and gave them properly training and completed the settlement and created history. At that time a patwari was having few registers and three among them were jamabandi;girdaavari and mutation register and chola register. Suppose there was halqa halqa Qasbai Baghat the main halqa in district Anantnag Or one can say Anantnag town. Main land of this revenue halqa was under under paddy crop and population was less and houses were less in number resulting a patwari was working properly and as he was having enough time each work done by him was remarkable . He was maintaining girdawari(done twice in a year) and chola bandi up to mark. Jamabandies were written after proper interval of four years and when a landlord died his/her Inhertience mutation war entered in the register within the stipulated time of three months. Chola bandi register was maintained yearly and it was properly checked by girdawar and Countersigned by Naib Tehsildar. In fact that was and is the proper procedure. The population of this town has increased manifold and number of houses has also increased and more and more government as well as private offices started to function. Each department increased the men and machinery especially education and health and police departments. In the Constitution many new acts were added and many got ammended resulting work load got added especially for a patwari coz he works for many departments as is visible in today’s work culture. But alas abi b Qasbai Baghat ka ik hi patwari ha cannot work load become him akward.
One needs to think. In such a situation how can one think that the patwari can do Justice with his/her assignments. Such is the situation in entire Jammu & Kashmir. But from last few decades due to population increase and technology boost many new types of works have been put in place and day by day new schemes are launched by the government for the welfare of people. Education department launched many schemes especially Sarva Suraksha Abhiyaan and one knows how many teachers got adjusted and same in health department. In my opinion it is best on the part of revenue department to look into the matter before starting settlement process and adjust patwaries at the already prepared preposal when new administrative units were created at panchayat level then only work will be done properly.
(The author is a freelancer.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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