WARANGAL: A day after the Telangana cabinet cleared the Bill to abolish the Village Revenue Officer (VRO) posts, farmers in erstwhile Warangal district slipped into panic over their pending applications. They thronged the Revenue Department offices in large groups to enquire if the VROs had forwarded their applications to the Mandal Revenue Officers (MRO).
In rural areas, VROs are the go-to officials for farmers, who want to settle land disputes or apply for mutation and patta passbooks of their agricultural lands. But this changed on Monday when the Cabinet cleared 'The Telangana Abolition of the Posts of Village Revenue Officers Bill, 2020' and 'The Telangana Rights in Land and Pattadar Passbooks Bill, 2020'. The government had also halted all property registration until further notice.
The farmers have, however, welcomed the government’s decision to scrap the VRO system. They hope that the new Revenue Act rids the system of corruption and that all services go online. The new Act is slated to be introduced during the ongoing monsoon session of the State Legislature. The VROs, on the other hand, handed over all the official documents and files of their respective villages to the tahsildars on Tuesday.
According to the revenue authorities, as property registration has been stopped across Telangana, the government has declared holidays for all the Registrar and Sub-Registrar offices until further orders. Now, the MROs have also urged the government to do the same for the Revenue offices till the new Act is enforced.
The reason for this, according to the officials, is that farmers and villagers continue to visit the offices to get an update on their pending applications and the Revenue officials end up turning them away, saying all services would resume once the new Act is enforced. Meanwhile, the VROs expressed dissatisfaction over the State government’s decision to scrap the posts without clarifying their current job position.